When Ginny stepped into the shower, she greeted Hermione with as much cheer as she could muster. She wasn't a morning person, but Hermione was. Acting bright-eyed and bushy-tailed herself might help build rapport.

"Hey! I'm in here using this one!" Hermione squawked. Both of her hands shot up to clutch an item hanging from a thin chain around her neck.

"Yeah, I can see that. There's room for two, more or less. We need to chat, and I thought you'd be more comfortable without the guys around."

"I'd be more comfortable with clothes on!"

"Nice necklace. What's that you wear on it?"

"Nothing! It's private. I mean… family heirloom."

"Yeah, must be private, considering you went for it with both hands, rather than protecting your modesty. Listen, this might not be the best time to bring this up, but Witch Weekly runs regular articles on grooming charms. They can help you get control over… well, bushiness, both upstairs and downstairs."

"Hey!" Hermione turned her body sideways to Ginny and hunched forward, but didn't take either hand away from the object she was guarding. "I wasn't planning on anyone seeing that any time soon. Can you please just get out?"

Ginny was struggling to resist her own urge to cover up, but needed to maintain the psychological advantage. She put her hands on her hips, and tried to look relaxed and confident.

"Don't be shy," she said. "It's just us girls. I didn't mind you sneaking a cheeky little peek to confirm I come by my red hair honestly, and that the Weasley line really did produce a girl after all this time."

"I didn't! I mean, sorry, I just…" Hermione took a breath, then started again, taking refuge in her lecturing mode. "As our bodies begin to grow and change, it's natural to be curious about what's normal, and to wonder if other girls–"

"Did Dumbledore hand you the Time-Turner himself, or did he pass it through McGonagall for plausible deniability?"

Hermione froze. "What? No. What's a Time-Turner?"

"I wear a charmed object myself," Ginny said, tapping her Sekhmet amulet.

Hermione glanced briefly at it, before her eyes darted away again.

Ginny went on. "I keep mine on pretty much all the time too. In my case, it's because I never know when I might need it. But I imagine I'd have even more reason with something truly powerful and rare–something I worried might get lost, or stolen, or… discovered."

Hermione said nothing.

"I assume when they gave it to you, you got a long lecture about the dangers of using it improperly. Does it seem sensible to hand over something so dangerous to a third-year student? For a reason as trivial as sorting out your class schedule?"

"There's nothing trivial about getting a good education. Besides, they 'hand over' wands to first-years, and those are plenty dangerous. Same with a lot of other things we deal with in classes here, as we discussed yesterday at dinner. And it's nothing anyway. Just jewelry."

"Sure, sure. But what do you think singles you out for the unique honor of having power over time itself? You must see there has to be more to it than being everyone's favorite academic over-achiever."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Dumbledore gave it to you to help you protect Harry, and good for him for recognizing talent and loyalty when he sees it. But if you're going to be ready when everything goes to hell, you need to practice. And not just in a safe, structured way for your class schedule. You need to develop a feel for it, just like with any magic."

"Ginny, please. I can't talk about this."

"It also wouldn't hurt to have extra free time with no one missing us, while we learn Occlumency."

"Occlumency?" Hermione asked, perking up enough to partly relax her defensive, curled-in posture. "I haven't read anything about that. What is it?"

Gotcha, Ginny thought. Aloud, she said, "It's the strongest defense against Legilimency. It's how you keep people out of your mind."

"You can use magic to read minds? That's a terrible invasion of privacy!"

"Yeah, some people have no sense of boundaries," Ginny agreed, deadpan.

"I've noticed," Hermione muttered.

"I'm afraid it gets worse. Someone skilled at Legilimency can plant things in your head–things that aren't even real."

Hermione stared at her, her face turning pale. "But… a person's mind is everything they are. You could spend your whole life studying and working hard to learn everything that's important to know, and then someone could come along and-rewrite you, and you wouldn't even know what they changed, or maybe even that they changed you at all. You'd just become a different person, which someone else made, rather than someone you chose to be."

Blurting all that out in one breath left her gasping for air.

Ginny said, "Okay, easy. Breathe. None of that can happen if you know how to defend yourself. I can help you learn."

In a single motion, Hermione stood up straight, turned, and advanced on her.

Ginny took a surprised step back, bumping into the shower door.

Hermione responded by taking another step forward. "How do I learn this?" she demanded.

"Whoa. Someone got over her shyness quick," Ginny said, trying to regain the initiative, or at least buy herself a moment to think.

Hermione blinked and glanced down at herself, then shook her head dismissively and locked her eyes on Ginny's again.

Hermione's stare was intense. If Ginny didn't know better, she'd think the other witch was trying to use Legilimency on her, and avert her gaze. Then again, looking away might appear as a sign of weakness, which felt like a bad idea.

Hermione said, "Ginny. Focus. The magic. It's appalling this isn't offered as a course here. What are the best books on the subject? I'll want works that cover both basic and advanced practice of course, but also some that explore the theory from the perspectives of different authors. Oh, and material on the field's historical development, to get a sense of the broader context."

"Ah, I don't know about all that. I don't think you can learn it from books. It's generally passed on from one practitioner to another."

Hermione's eyes narrowed. "I see. One more thing there's no way for Muggle-borns to even find out about unless someone already on the inside decides to throw us a bone."

"It's not that. Legilimency is so rare, most people don't worry about it. It's even rarer for someone to be able to hide what they're doing. Once you know they're doing it, the simplest defense is to break eye contact; a lot simpler than putting in the effort to learn Occlumency. But you might be one of the few who has both the determination and a good enough reason, given how close you are to Harry."

"I see," Hermione said, nodding and taking a step back. She looked up at the ceiling as though collecting her thoughts, though Ginny noted this also served to break eye contact. "Since you brought it up, I take it you've put in the effort to learn these skills?"

"I'm no expert. I know the basics. To go any further I need more practice, and someone I trust to practice with."

"Since you can't learn it from books, someone must have taught you. Why not continue with the same person?"

"We don't need anyone else. I know enough to get you started, then we can practice together."

"Who's been teaching you so far?" Hermione asked, toying idly with the Time-Turner she still clutched with both hands.

Ginny had hoped to put this off until she could gain Hermione's trust. She'd expected Hermione to be too flustered from her barging in–and too eager to learn the magic she was offering–to ask questions. Hermione wasn't supposed to be so damn collected.

Ginny tried to push past the question. "Like I said, I can be your teacher. No need to involve anyone else."

"Tell me who taught you."

In a voice just above a whisper, Ginny said the hated name. "Tom Riddle."

"I appreciate your honesty!" Hermione called out, then vanished.

Ginny blinked. Well, that didn't go quite–Ah, fuck!

As she spun around and grabbed for the door handle, she saw a wand reaching over the top of the stall, and heard Hermione's voice from the other side. "Petrificus Totalus!"

~*~

When Hermione activated her Time-Turner, she watched Ginny disappear, along with the water spraying from the shower head, and the steam in the air. The shower stall turned bone dry, at least until the thin film of water which came back through time with her began dripping to the floor.

Time 'travel' didn't feel like moving anywhere. It felt more like the world changed around you. She shivered at the sudden drop in temperature, though that was nothing compared to the cold feeling of horror that had flooded through her the moment she'd realized the implications of Ginny's admission.

This wasn't how the story was supposed to go. Harry saving her should have been the end of it. He'd broken the diary's power, and freed her. But if Riddle had manipulated her, permanently changed who she was… Oh, her poor family. To believe they had her back safe and sound, only to find out it had been a lie this whole time…

Oh God, and Harry. He'd not only be heartbroken, he'd find a way to blame himself. At least he'd be safe from her. Hermione would see to that.

She'd been starting to see the younger girl as a friend as well, but now it seemed she'd never even known the real Ginny.

Despite what Ginny claimed about needing a teacher to learn Occlumency, Hermione decided she and Harry and Ron would have to find a way to figure it out on their own, so they didn't lose anyone else the same way they lost Ginny. She supposed they might find a teacher who'd been properly screened and vetted by a recognized licensing body–though based on what she knew about how the wizarding world operated in general, she wasn't optimistic.

Still, Ginny's situation might not be completely hopeless. If Riddle had used magic to corrupt her, someone who knew the same magic should be able to help her recover. It was only fair that magic should have to work that way, and there had to be people who learned Legilimency specifically to help with cases like this.

The whole thing was way beyond her experience or knowledge. She should go and get McGonagall right away. Well, not right away. She had to wait to catch up to the moment when she'd left (would leave?), to avoid creating a paradox. Then she had to make sure Ginny couldn't run off. There was no telling what she might do, once she knew her cover was blown. A Body-Bind Curse should do it.

What was the cue she'd left herself at her departure point? 'I appreciate your honesty.' That was it. She wasn't sure how honest Ginny had actually been about any of it, but the specific phrase didn't matter. She just needed to remember it, and wait to hear it before acting.

First things first. She opened the shower door and reached for her robe… Whoops. Her robe wouldn't be here until she caught up to it in time, and she couldn't wait around–not without risking running into her former self. As her situation sunk in, she felt herself blush, even with no one to see her–yet. The walk back to her room now seemed much farther, and awfully exposed.

Maybe someone had left an extra towel in one of the other stalls. She started to step out to go look, but stopped herself. She may not have her wand, or a stitch of clothing, but she had her brain and a powerful magical artefact. Something about the rules for using the latter told her to stop and use the former before doing anything else.

The rules for using a Time-Turner didn't say you couldn't do anything of consequence in the past–only that you couldn't change anything you'd already observed. The less you observed, the less you forced yourself into a trap made of things you were either required or forbidden to do.

Right, then. Think. It would be tremendously beneficial to her dignity if a helpful individual had left something in one of the other shower stalls that she could use to cover herself. There was no contradiction between what she had observed so far and her desired state of affairs, which meant things could have happened that way.

Even better, she could be the helpful individual she hoped for, to make sure it got done. She still had the option to travel further back.

If she had observed the other stalls as empty, she would have closed off the option. That must be why her subconscious warned her to stop and think. Maybe she was developing a feel for this, as Ginny put it. No, don't think about that poor girl right now. Focus on the immediate goal.

She decided she might as well leave herself a full set of clothes, rather than just a towel. She closed her eyes and visualized her planned timeline–along with that of the items she would be moving–to convince herself her actions wouldn't create a paradox.

Time travel was awful to think about in words. The part of her brain which handled proper grammar rebelled, nearly as much as the part that saw the past as closed and the future as open.

Diagrams were much clearer. She was grateful now that before releasing a Time-Turner to her, the Ministry had required her to submit her diagrammed solutions to a set of hypothetical time-travel scenarios. At the time, since the plan was for her to use the Time-Turner strictly for attending classes, it had seemed like a purely theoretical exercise, albeit a fascinating one.

What she was considering now was not against the innate rules of time magic, though the Ministry's rules regulating its use strongly discouraged any interaction with your own past self. Even in the absence of a true paradox, the causality involved could get rather dodgy.

Rules. Hmmm. What about the rule against streaking through the halls? No one had specifically said that was a rule at Hogwarts, but they didn't need to.

Following rules was important when it came to magic. Otherwise, it would be so easy to do truly awful things. Though sometimes you had to weigh rules against each other. For example, the unwritten rule against setting your Potions teacher on fire was outweighed by the unwritten rule about keeping your friend from falling to his death from a cursed broom.

Having settled the ethical question, she reviewed the specific, concrete steps of her plan one last time, then slipped out of her shower stall and darted to the next one along the row. She let out a relieved breath when she saw her clothes waiting there, not having quite convinced herself it would work before trying it.

After she dressed, she left to find somewhere to hide until she was due back to deal with Ginny–somewhere she wouldn't run into either her past self coming to take a shower, or the future self who would bring clothes for her.

The feeling of something important left undone would be nagging at her until she carried out the actions she'd committed herself to, but there was no help for it at the moment.

Now, what to do about Ginny?

She'd managed to avoid thinking about the tragic situation while dealing with the practicalities of time travel, but now the hopelessness she'd felt washed over her again.

Was going to McGonagall the right thing to do? She remembered what Ron told her about what happened to people whose minds had been damaged by Dark magic–what he'd been terrified would happen to his sister.

Having experienced a Dementor firsthand, she couldn't risk sending Ginny to a prison full of those awful things without at least talking to the girl.

Before she could face that confrontation, she needed to prepare, in the place of power where she always readied herself for battle: the library.