"I don't mean to minimize the importance of detention, Professor Sprout." Ginny thrust her scrub brush in soapy water with an agitated plea. Then, she attacked her umpteenth terra cotta pot with the vicious scrubbing required to remove three hundred years of caked soil. "But I really have somewhere else to be right now."
The "following Friday" had finally arrived. The sun had sunk (presumably - no one had actually seen the sun behind dementor-enhanced cloud cover for over a month). Tom Riddle (Version Two Boggart Edition) was waiting for his wallop.
Yet Ginny found herself unjustly delayed.
"I fully admit," she tried again, flicking filthy water off her nose. "I was not paying attention in class this morning. But if it's any consolation, the 'somewhere else I'm supposed to be' is an even worse detention-"
"This is not detention, dear," Professor Sprout levitated Ginny's three stacks of finished pots. They settled themselves on the shelves hanging above the fresh mandrakes Ginny's Herbology class had re-potted that morning. "It's academic enrichment."
"It's mandatory and punitive! Bona fide dictionary definition of 'detention'-"
"Try not to think of it as 'punitive' dear."
"Any time a professor requires extra labor just because a student may have accidentally caused another student to faint during class - though that had more to do with poorly donned safety equipment than any infraction the aforementioned student may or may not have committed - absolutely counts as punitive."
"Or a bonus lesson. A non-punitive bonus lesson."
Ginny felt the pressure of her tardiness mounting as the fading trickle of light clouded the greenhouse panes. Unrealized anticipation caused her anxious stomach to churn.
"Please, please, Professor- "
Begging. So undignified. So desperate.
"- I know I don't have the most sterling reputation, but I swear I didn't mean to knock him out, I swear I didn't."
"Don't distress yourself dear, Mr. Creevey should be awakening soon. Your mandrake was only six weeks old, barely more than a sapling! A lengthy nap in the infirmary can be quite restorative. The important thing is you understand mandrakes require a full three inches of topsoil, not two and three-quarters-"
Ginny gnashed her teeth, tuning out the rest of the lecture as her insides twisted with nausea. "In the pot, out of the pot, in a bigger pot," Ginny muttered. "Why don't we start them off in the humongous pots in the first place instead of moving them back and forth every other week?"
"Mandrakes thrive snug in their pots. A well-sized pot is as comforting as a warm hug."
"By all means, let's make sure the mandrakes get all cozy with their warm pre-harvest hugs before we boil them, mash them up and smear the paste all over petrified people."
"That's a rather dark perspective, Miss Weasley."
Ginny did not want to debate all the reasons why it was unwise to personify mandrakes.
She'd win, obviously.
But it wasn't worth remembering the tiny mandrake grave behind Hagrid's hut. Next to the rooster graves.
And now she had inadvertently started another guilt-spiral. Why did it have to be Colin Creevey she had accidentally knocked out this morning because what was she supposed to do now? Write him another apology letter because the first one had been oh-so-successful?
Meant in a Dripping With Sarcasm Not Successful At All way?
"I really need to go. He's waiting for me in a cabinet." Ginny tried again.
"Your next detention is in a cabinet?"
Realizing that argument was only going to suck up more time, Ginny changed tactics. "I had to write a bonus essay for the other detention! That's how serious it is." She snatched another pot, each word accompanied by a vigorous scrub. "Is a minor potting infraction more important than a bonus essay? Priorities."
It was bad enough her bonus essay had been at the bottom of her bag when a resentfully emancipated Scabbers succumbed to incontinence. She had to rewrite the whole thing over again on fresh parchment.
Ginny scrubbed harder, spraying filth all over the gardening table. "After allllll that work, I do not want to get penalized for the late arrival of a bonus essay I shouldn't have had to write in the first place."
"Two more pots, Miss Weasley."
"And now that we're really getting into it, scrubbing garden pots seems to me to be a futile task. Isn't their whole purpose to hold dirt? Pots are dirt receptacles. Key word, dirt. Dirty. Washing pots in between plants is just-"
"Oh sweet Lord," Professor Sprout sighed. "You may go, Miss Weasley."
Ginny tossed her brush in the bucket with a splash. "Thankyouprofessor," Ginny snatched her satchel – eau de rodent still lingering in the lining- the frayed strap digging painfully into her shoulder as she darted out. "Again, I'm so terribly sorry about the accident."
Before she cleared the exit, Ginny's conscience whipped her back around. "And also all the complaining. It may have bordered on sass. Ihopeyouhaveaveryniceeveningwithyourplants."
Stomach still knotting – either hunger or nerves, tossup at this point - she raced across the grounds misted by highland perma-drizzle. Reaching the castle's grand door, Ginny squeezed her eyes tight. She rolled her shoulders, took three requisite preparatory breaths, bounced on her toes to loosen her limbs. Then, game face on, Ginny shoved the door open and shot into the castle interior.
Ignoring the warm air, Ginny slid behind the tapestry depicting the Impalement of Wilfred Elphick. Only when she was certain she had successfully infiltrated the castle unnoticed did Ginny dare peek beyond those ancient threads. As had become her habit, she performed a rapid-fire assessment to determine the likeliest ghost-free route to her destination.
The central moving staircases had become a no-go zone during the castle's most congested travel times. Her peers were wary around Ginny, but mostly harmless - save for Loony Lovegood, whose staircases always managed to swing close enough to share some conspiracy theory concerning Sirius Black, coconut water, or the medicinal properties of mouldy bread.
Still, Ginny had learned the hard way: where students went, ghosts followed. The undead were surprisingly social creatures. Also, vindictive and foul-tasting.
The only ghost who hadn't tortured Ginny by floating their fashion-backward ectoplasm through her sinus cavities was Nearly Headless-Nick, ostensibly the only ghost with an actual reason to hold a grudge.
Pressed for time, Ginny realized she had no choice but to risk the "short cut" hall, with its ever present scent of dungbomb.
She dashed across the corridor. Route happily deserted, she held her breath while methodically scanning the ceiling and walls for any surprise arrivals. By the time she darted up the tight winding stairs towards the DADA classroom, her leg muscles were burning and her luck ran out with three ghosts wafting in the upstairs corridor.
Momentarily thwarted, she backtracked two side halls but rallied with an impressive sprint to the finish. Adrenaline pumping, she skid to a stop before the double DADA doors. With a heave, Ginny shoved them open, gasping as her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light.
"Professor Lupin? I'm sorry I'm –" Ginny's huff trailed off as she beheld the wardrobe centered in the torchlit room.
Unused to seeing the classroom at night, perhaps it was the torch light flickering along oil-polished oak or the clawed shadows from the dragon skeleton looming above that created dangerous illusions of mystery from an otherwise innocuous cabinet.
Yet, Ginny's skin crawled as she inched closer. She reminded herself nothing in this room was dangerous. She wouldn't have been assigned a detention that held literal danger.
Because DADA professors were trustworthy.
Except for all the untrustworthy ones.
As Ginny's eyes grew round with trepidation the wardrobe appeared to swell, a faint rumble vibrating the floor. The wardrobe's curved lines and over-sized doors were hardly enough to contain the creature rattling inside. The aged wood creaked and Ginny's heart leaped into her throat and-
The wardrobe lurched six inches to the left.
Ginny shrieked.
"Merlin's Frotzing Mother of-"
She blamed post-ghost adrenaline. It wasn't her finest moment.
Ginny leaped onto a side table, yanking her wand from her robes with one hand, snatching some heavy iron fixture from the table with the other. Remembering she was a witch, she held that iron thingy like the most formidable Beater's bat ever created, but also managed to shout "Bombarda" which in retrospect was a stupid thing to do, considering the wardrobe was the only thing separating her from the Tom Riddle rattling inside it and it was in her best interest to keep that structure in one piece.
"PROTEGO!"
Professor Lupin's blocking spell shimmered before the wardrobe. However, it wasn't necessary. Not only did Ginny's wand stick on the blasting spell, but it seemed to clog up, sending a vibration backwards into Ginny's arm. Much like hitting her funny bone on a table corner.
"Ow, ow, ow, bugger, barmy, frotzing, shnizzle, ow!" She hopped up on down, flicking her wand arm, several times, as if that would make the sensation go away.
"Miss Weasley?"
But both the wand arm and the faux Bludger bat shot back to attention as the wardrobe shook and rattled yet again, as if it contained a baker's dozen manticores and not one wanker with a megalomaniacal penchant for poncy anagrams.
"Why is it doing that?" Ginny screeched.
"Miss Weas-"
"No one said it was going to do that!" She was off on the wrong foot, she knew that. At least the part of her that wasn't shaking knew that. Ten percent of her knew that. "I did research and by 'research' I mean I asked my brothers and none of them warned me it was going to do that!"
The hinges on the wardrobe door moaned, a rusty creak threatening the integrity of the doors.
"ACK!" Ginny's wand arm arrowed at the wardrobe again. "DEPULSO!"
"PROTEGO!" Another shimmer in front of the creaking cabinet. "Miss Weasley, you need to calm down. It senses your-"
Whatever that glorified closet sensed, it sent it lurching back to the right.
Ginny shrieked again. "C-C-CONJUNCTIVITO-"
"-PROTEGO!" Her spell reverberated against Professor Lupin's shield with such force, the dragon skeleton above shook, threatening to topple. "Miss Weasley, while I applaud your creativity, a conjunctivitis curse will not work because the wardrobe does not have eyes!"
"Whose side are you on? Stop protecting it!" She flourished her wand at the professor. "You're being suspicious!"
"Suspicious? I don't-"
"The last defense professor was a memory-erasing fraud! The one before that had a dark lord stuck to the back of his head! The one before that died mid-year choking on a fishbone-"
"That's not suspicious, that's an unfortunate accident-"
"That fishbone was divine justice! After death, he was exposed as a secret trigamist with one family stowed in Hogsmeade, another in Patagonia and a third in Helsinki!"
"On a teacher's salary?" Professor Lupin blinked. "How did he manage all the international floo fees?"
"I don't know!" Ginny cried. "My point is statistically speaking defense professors are always hiding something so stop being suspicious! In case you haven't noticed I'm a bit twitchy!"
"I can see that. Quite clearly. However-"
The boggart wardrobe was not interested in Professor Lupin's howevers. It shimmied as if it could shake its hinges right off.
"- the wardrobe is reacting to you, Ginny." He spoke with deliberate care, raising his voice to be heard above the rattle. "I can help, but you'll need to calm down."
"How?" Ginny yelped, a high-octave screech that barely covered the scrape of the wardrobe as it lurched yet again.
"Let's start with a deep breath, Ginny."
She filled her lungs, but wasted most of that air on clarification. "Glorified-stretch-and-be-bored-club-deep-breath or just-normal-I've-been-doing-it-since-five-seconds-after-birth-breath?"
"Whichever one allows your nervous system to realize you are safe." Closer than she expected, his mouth quirked as he studied her face. "Though I think your freckles may require further convincing. Half of them seem to have fled."
The unexpected non-sequitur wrenched her gaze from the rumbling wardrobe.
"They didn't flee, I removed them." Her response was reflex. "Charms Club yesterday. Charms Club is anti-freckle."
As if the pulsing wardrobe weren't about to explode, Professor Lupin leaned against a side table. Inappropriately casual, he had the audacity to summon a chocolate bar from his desk. "Anti-freckle? Odd."
"Not as odd as the anti-callus stance," Ginny spat. "That one's just stupid. Building broomstick calluses in the right spots takes years. Yet we anti-callus every Thursday."
"Not a lot of fliers in Charms Club?"
"Not a lot of sense. The student leader who picks the spells plays on her house team. She should know better. Even so, she bumped anti-callus charms yesterday because she was convinced that the four freckles on her nose-"
"Stop. Truly?" Professor Lupin adjusted his worn cuff. "Four?"
"Literally four." She flicked another glance at the wardrobe and lifted her bat higher. "Freaking out because she was convinced those four measly little freckles were getting bigger. So we had to freckle removal charm again. One at a time."
Professor Lupin studied the densely freckled side of her face, comparing it to the freckle-free hemisphere. "That seems onerous."
"It is! She got so anti-freckle-agitated her spell went all wonky, her freckle removal charm didn't work and at one point she was staring at herself in the mirror, jabbing her wand at her nose-"
"Always dangerous."
"Yes! She's a Ravenclaw for Merlin's sake," Ginny pointed the iron fixture in her hand at him, for emphasis. "You'd think she'd be smart enough to remember elementary wand safety! But the funny part was she was so mental about the whole thing, those four freckles? They actually did get bigger. Every jab? They. Got. Bigger. Also started flashing neon orange."
Professor Lupin chuckled as he tore a corner of the chocolate wrapper. "Orange?"
"The Chudley Cannons wish they could produce an orange that vivid. So, Charms Club had to end early because she started wailing buckets and everyone hauled her off to the infirmary to get fixed. So I only got half my freckles removed."
"I see," the Professor broke off a piece of chocolate. "And the moral of this story?"
Ginny threw up her hands, which was hard because that fixture was heavy. "Don't freak or you might stay overnight in the infirmary, miss two exams and spend the day napping next to someone suffering from poorly donned earmuffs?"
"No. I think the most important thing to note is that wardrobe? It stopped rattling."
"Oh." Ginny's gaze snapped to the settled cabinet. "You let me talk all that time just so the wardrobe wouldn't rattle? I bet you're feeling clever right now."
"A little. Also, duplicitous," he conceded. "Which, as you've pointed out, is on brand for Defense professors. Now, how about I trade you some chocolate in exchange for the heavy antique candelabra?"
It wasn't until he pointed it out that Ginny realized how much that cumbersome iron fixture, with all its unnecessary ornamentation, weighed. Her left arm shook with muscle fatigue. "I- I suppose that would be okay."
Embarrassed, Ginny lowered herself onto the table, legs dangling over the edge. Several moments of awkward silence passed before she finally blurted, "can we just pretend none of that happened?"
To his credit, Professor Lupin did not laugh at her. Instead, in an informal manner that Ginny was unaccustomed to seeing in teachers, he propped himself up on the table next to her and offered the chocolate bar. "Yes. Let's declare a do over. The candy isn't poisoned, by the way."
Before she could take it, Ginny's Best Self demanded she clear the air. "I'm sorry I called you suspicious."
"For what it's worth, I am hiding something." He leaned in conspiratorially. "I have three additional chocolate stashes in this room and I have no intention of telling you where they are."
Ginny snorted. "Smart. Chocolate's in high demand with all the dementors roaming the countryside. I wouldn't trust me with that information either."
She allowed herself to break off a piece of the offered chocolate as the wardrobe shimmied on its carved legs, just enough to remind her it was there. The white hot fear that had imbued her left bicep with extraordinary strength had cooled, but not extinguished entirely. "That's going to take some getting used to."
"Boggarts can be tricky. And," he sighed, "they sense your fear. Even through the door."
"Do over," she whispered, not intending to voice the sentiment, but at least it was only her voice she couldn't control.
Her bowels were still fine, that was something at least.
"There's no rush, Miss Weasley. If you'd like to discuss what's in that wardrobe -"
"With all due respect, Professor," Ginny huffed, her eyes sliding away from the conspicuous wardrobe in the center of the room, to scan the tables for sneaky tea, which was usually a precursor to her being nudged to 'discuss' things. "I'd rather just get on with it. It's been a shizzle day, shiniffy week, shiteling life."
"Shiniffy week?" Her Professor's tone was laced with wry amusement. She'd consider that condescending, except he didn't push her further to chat. Instead, he nodded at the chocolate she held between two fingers. "Eat that. While I keep chocolate handy because of the dementors lurking outside the grounds, I've found it's a universal remedy for - how did you phrase it? Shizzle days."
"It's not how I phrase it," Ginny grumbled. "It's how my anti-profanity quills phrase it. Why are the substitute words rewriting the good ones in my head? Can chocolate fix that?"
"No. But I did not have to deduct points for profanity, so in some way, chocolate did contribute to your general well-being."
Ginny scoffed but treated herself to a corner nibble. The rich flavor melted over her tongue, a creamy layer of sugared bliss. "Whoa!"
"Good?" With a knowing look, the Professor broke off another piece and offered it freely.
"This can't be chocolate." Oh, Good Merlin, that was so much better than anything she had ever tasted. Ginny nibbled another bit and looked at the Professor with new eyes. "I just realized my whole life, I've been lied to by the chocolate frog company. They've been handing out waxy rubbish with their cards. This is chocolate?"
"It is," the Professor chuckled, lowering his voice. "Honeydukes keeps a small stash behind the counter, but you have to ask for it specifically. With discretion."
"Why?" Ginny lowered her voice as well, questioning in whispered tones.
"Muggle chocolate. I find it superior, though some wizards might disagree."
"Ones without taste buds." Ginny snorted. As the chocolate warmed her soul, Ginny eyed the wardrobe, finally silent. "Were you quite serious about the do over? Because under no circumstances do I want Professor McGonagall to know I attempted to destroy a piece of furniture with a conjunctivitis curse."
"Are you sure?" Professor Lupin sometimes seemed as shabby and worn as his gently used tweed with the threaded elbow patches. This moment, though, his eyes wrinkled in amusement, making him seem far younger than Ginny had realized. "Because Minnie would certainly appreciate-"
"Wait." Ginny spun on her hip, staring him down with slack-jawed incredulity. "You call Professor McGonagall Minnie?"
"Not to her face." A corner of the Professor's mouth quirked. "But your conjunctivitis curse was the best one of the lot, if not entirely appropriate to the circumstance. I presume you wrote that essay on wand properties?"
"Twice. Unfortunate accident. Do you want it now?"
"When we're finished, is fine. For now, was there anything you learned from your essay that would explain why that particular spell was the one that worked but the other two were– how did you describe it before?"
"Sticky. Congested inside my wand." Ginny figured that was the easiest way to describe the resistant feeling. "According to my research – which I confess I scribbled as fast as I could from the text in the library-"
"-did you at least put it in your own words?"
"Absolutely, but remember my quill has an anti-profanity ward on it, so I can't guarantee it makes sense. The wand wood is ebony. Ebony wands tend to choose non-conformist individual type people."
"Does that describe you?"
Ginny shrugged. She did not want to think about that. Instead, she recited the textbook. "Ebony wands are good for combative magic and transfiguration. Bombarda or depulso are combative spells. They should have worked."
"But what is the core made from?"
"Unicorn hair. Those cores," Ginny recited, dutifully, "are the most consistent wands, though not always the most powerful. They are the least likely to turn to dark arts and…"
She paused, grasping for her own words this time. "They get sad. They get sad when they're mishandled. They're faithful, too. Might be why it doesn't like me all that much."
"I don't think it's a matter of your wand not liking you, Ginny."
Ginny shrugged. "It always feels like it's deciding whether to perform the spells. Judgmental. I have to wait for it, wait for it, while it decides if this is a spell worth doing."
"I see. For five points-"
"Oh, I love earning points."
Lupin chuckled, making his scruffy face appear younger. Merrier, as if rusty smile muscles remembered the delight of a good joke. "For five points, given what you just told me about your wand, tell me why it might be sad after spending last year being appropriated by a dark wizard terrorizing the population of Hogwarts with spells that enabled his intention of doing harm?"
Ginny snorted at his long-winded question, which he managed to deliver with a straight face. "A moral choice: do I take the five pity points for a question you answered yourself, or does pride demand a double-or-nothing?"
Professor Lupin threw back his head and laughed. "Double-or-nothing, then. When you asked your brothers about boggarts, did they tell you of the Riddikulus spell?"
"Yes."
"Good. Double-or-nothing. You need to find common ground with that wand. So tell me why Riddikulus is a good spell for you to practice together?"
"Well," Ginny stalled, collecting her thoughts. "I suppose it's because Riddikulus isn't a dark spell at all - unicorn hair core wouldn't have an issue. Seriously, it's not even a little grayish like a tripping jinx. Even a tickling spell could be considered a tiny hex."
"And?"
"Annnnnnnd," Ginny thought about what she had read about the spell itself. "The ebony wand wood is suited for um… individuals. Riddikulus is a spell that's going to have a different result for anyone?"
"Are you asking me or telling me?"
Ginny took a steadying breath. "I'm telling you. Riddikulus is a highly individualized spell, and as such it might be easier with a wand that likes people who are themselves. Especially after a year of being used by someone who wasn't really herself, the whole time."
"And we can presume then…?"
"That the wand has less reason to be sticky or resist the spell. That's probably why the conjunctivitis spell fired, too. It wasn't going to hurt the wardrobe – so the sad unicorn hair wasn't going to get more depressed - and I suppose it could be considered non-conformist to try blinding furniture. I panicked and made no sense. But what's lunacy if not non-conformist?"
Lupin smiled, almost proudly. "Excellent Miss Weasley. Ten points to Gryffindor."
Ginny only half-smiled back. It wasn't as if she had done anything truly amazing, like slay a basilisk or win the Quidditch cup. Still, she was pleased with the first points she had earned all year.
Professor Lupin pushed away from the table, gesturing toward the wardrobe. "So, are you ready to deal with Voldemort in the cupboard?"
"Tom," Ginny muttered.
The room was quiet while the Professor let the name settle. If she had been able to snatch the word back out of the air, she would have. Finally, he cleared his throat and asked, "Aren't they the same person?"
No. They weren't.
Voldemort was a monster. So dark people avoided speaking his name. An evil that could be fought or avoided, depending on a person's penchant for fight or flight.
But Tom Riddle? He had treated Ginny's every thought with care, comforted her through sadness, applauded her successes. He coaxed her hopes, drew out her fears, finding the exact words she needed with intuitive ease.
Tom was evil that masqueraded as good. On the surface, no difference.
But she didn't say any of that. "Can we just get on with it?"
"Are you sure," the Professor studied her, as if he could read all that she hadn't said in her half-freckled face. "We don't have to-"
"I'm not trying to rush or sass," Ginny tore her eyes away from the wardrobe again, "but I need to do this now. Waiting makes it worse. I've been waiting for two weeks and please I – I just need to-"
"I understand," he assured her. "Do you remember the wand motion?"
"Doing magic is far easier than pretending to do magic," Impatient, Ginny demonstrated the motion several times before she rebelled. "Can we just open that thing?"
"Alright," he said, seemingly satisfied. "I want you to imagine Tom Riddle."
Ginny stared at the cupboard. It rattled again – positively distracting - so she shut her eyes.
She imagined Tom's handsome face. She imagined the dark hair, the brown eyes she thought soulful. She imagined his voice and emerald green tie beneath his own secondhand robes, the robes that had made him kindred, but not kind.
"Do you need help thinking of something funny?"
"For f-f-frotz sake!" Ginny's eyes popped open, so she could glare with appropriate disdain. "You know I'm related to Fred and George, right?"
He chuckled. "Indeed. Are you ready then?"
"I've been ready."
Perhaps not every battle was won, but a war was more than one battle. And perhaps she wouldn't get last year back - and maybe she wouldn't ever be awesome again - but she felt close to understanding something. Like a word on the tip of her tongue, it was right there.
Movement and motion and a moment. Bloody take the moment and make Tom Riddle small. Silly. She could-
But the idea slipped away, like water through open fingers.
Frotz it. Her best work was always improvisational anyway. "Do it," she grunted.
"Aberto!" The wardrobe flew open.
Ginny raised her wand, the spell's incantation poised on her lips.
During the Great Snowball War of Christmas '86, Ron had been driven back too far onto the Burrow's pond and had fallen through the ice. With a gleeful whoop, Ginny cannonballed after him, too young to understand why a person shouldn't swim in the dead of winter.
It was called cold water shock.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
Lupin's harsh cry, his wand jab, neither could yank her widened eyes from the thing that emerged from that closet, sliding forward as if on rails. It was almost on top of her before the Professor's binding spell struck.
The boggart stilled, held suspended in time. It hovered before her, unmoving, unseeing – but Ginny was the one frozen.
Cold water shock. A life-threatening reaction to sudden immersion. Gasping, hyperventilation, heart palpitations and impaired mental ability. No fight, no flight, just freeze.
"Huh," the Professor said. He might have said more, Ginny was uncertain. His voice sounded distant as he plonked down on a student desk, head cocked as he studied Ginny's boggart.
It was not Tom Riddle.
Ginny lurched forward. Her bottom lip trembled with shivering horror as inch-by-inch, she slowly circled her greatest fear.
Strings stretching up to nowhere were attached to the ankles, the elbows, the knees and wrists of a life-sized marionette, reminiscent of the puppets she had once seen in the Egyptian muggle market.
Except it was expressionless. The wooden doll didn't have a face.
The puppet had no face, but it was wearing a Hogwarts uniform, with the black tie the first years were issued before the sorting.
It had no face, but it did sport long wooden strips of bright, orange hair.
It had no face, but the right side of its head - and only the right side of its head - had a dense constellation of dots around the apples of its cheeks. Less dense dotting the right side of the forehead, a few scattered on the lower cheek, some stragglers on the right side of its chin.
Half a face of freckles.
Ginny stumbled backwards, knocking a desk over onto its side.
"Not quite what I expected," came the professor's perplexed words from behind her. "Seems there's more to unpack here."
Ginny fled the room.
()()()
()()()
Her primary motivation was sound: to put as much space as humanly possible between herself and that Not-Tom-Riddle-Thing in the DADA closet.
She barreled past scandalized portraits shouting "slow down!" She swerved around corners and ignored armor that poked empty helmets out of their niches as if to ascertain whether she was being chased.
She ran with no idea where she was going. As long as her legs were pumping, thoughts and feelings couldn't settle or coalesce, she'd outrun them forever if she had to.
Panic swept away forethought. She may as well have been stricken with temporary amnesia, the kind that erased memory of all the other dangers lurking at Hogwarts.
"WEASLEY!"
The prepubescent shout yanked her to a stop.
"YOU!"
Ginny's arms flung sideways for balance, waving in an imaginary breeze as she skid, her shoes squeaking on a polished floor. Her body lurched upright before she crashed into Colin Creevey, his livid face rage-red, or perhaps simply flushed from his mandrake-imposed nap.
Awareness caught up, permeated Ginny's psyche. Polished floor not stone. Colin Creevey. Hospital corridor. She was hung out to dry in the well-traversed passage between the dungeons and Great Hall where dozens of Slytherin and Hufflepuff basement dwellers crowded on their way to dinner.
She had kept her head down in the weeks since term began, avoiding gossipy whispers. But now she was dangling in a breeze unable to move in any direction as all those eyes pinned her in place– greedy eyes searching for potential drama – drawn by Colin Creevey's aggravated shout.
With a bravery that Godric himself would likely admire, Colin Creevey utilized the only weapon he had at hand.
He shoved his camera at Ginny. The bulb flashed with an aggressive pop. "You tried to kill me! Again!"
Ginny flinched, momentarily blinded but not deaf to the chorus of scandalized gasps from the crowd.
"Stay back!" Two more jabs of light assaulted her. "You tried to kill me with a mandrake this morning!"
Words failed. She had no idea what to say as she tried to blink away the glowing green spots that had replaced her normal eyesight. "I didn't-"
Amid a faint smell of sulfur, Colin popped his flash twice more. "I was in the infirmary all day because of you!"
"You were in the infirmary all day-" Ginny drew the attention of three ghosts who darted through her head, "-because you didn't grab the earmuffs large enough to fit over your humongous ears!"
She knew immediately it was the wrong thing to say. Her younger sister reflexes had steered her toward deflection. As a result, Colin Creevey was as livid as any brother when faced with the possibility he might be partially responsible for his own misery. He growled. "You." Pop. "Stay." Pop. "Back." Pop pop pop.
Ginny reeled. Off balance, she crashed into a clump of students. Hands gripped at her arms, smell of damp dungeon flooded her nose, spoiled ghosty aftertaste clung to her tongue. Tripping, her sight returned as Colin Creevey's mechanical iris-
"EXPELLIARMUS!"
Before it could render her blind again, the infernal camera soared through the air. It whizzed close enough to flutter Ginny's hair as she whipped around to witness that prized possession smack straight into the hand of Draco Malfoy.
"Careful Creevey." The warning was accompanied by a righteous visage above a heroically stalwart stance…
…as if Ginny had been inter-dimensionally ported into an upside-down-nightmare-bizarro-world where Draco Frotzing Malfoy had switched bodies with Harry Blarfy Potter.
"Haven't you heard?" Malfoy tossed the camera from hand-to-hand with feigned nonchalance. But he proved the integrity of the real world was intact as he flared his snooty nose and doomed Ginny with his next words. "Shweazley's the Heir of Slytherin."
The corridor crowded with gullible Hufflepuffs gasped. As if Draco Malfoy was an oracle who descended a mountain to biblically affirm what they had only dared suspect.
Words of objection laced with anti-profanity-quill-approved curses dangled out of Ginny's reach, squelched as Malfoy smirked at her half-freckled face. With malicious delight, he tossed the camera back to Creevey, sauntering off without another word.
"I knew your 'sorry-I-was-possessed' apology was nonsense. Last year," Colin Creevey eyes widened, "half the school was convinced Harry Potter was the Heir. You're the villain but he saved you anyway!"
At his words, discreet whispers of the last six weeks were no longer leashed. Outright sneers and hisses emerged from those students lingering in the corridor, verbose mouths above wagging chins above stretched necks, collectively reddened with shame – shame they deserved because they had socially persecuted the wrong person last term.
A knockback hex from an unknown source thumped between her shoulder blades. Ginny stumbled forward, her head in danger of crashing with her knees, before Colin Creevey popped one last flash in the Heir of Slytherin's face.
Recoiling, Ginny's shoulders scrunched up all the way to her ears, as if drawn by invisible strings.
Six more ghosts raced through her. Then they double backed for a second run. Her whole body felt as if it were emerged in sewage.
But beneath the censure of her peers Ginny understood, with perfect clarity, ghosts would no longer be the worst danger lurking in the corridors..
()()()
()()()
Twenty minutes later, Ginny collapsed against a pillar in the open-air courtyard. Her satchel hung off one dejected shoulder, a sacked meal clutched in her other hand.
Eating outside on dementor-threatened grounds was preferable to eating inside in the hostile Great Hall. Ginny found the kitchen elves didn't even require an excuse to pack a sandwich, only a "study group meeting in ten" white lie.
As weary as she'd ever been, Ginny surveyed the torchlit courtyard. Flickering shadows colored it more ominous than it appeared during gray-washed Saturday Gobstone meetings. Low stone walls below the lifted arches blocked only part of the late autumn air. Along the outside pillars, chilled night winds threatened the last leaves shivering on their shrubs.
Since dementors didn't typically hide in shrubbery, Ginny didn't bother to scout for safety. She was unlikely to spot a stringed half-freckled puppet hovering in the bushes. Anything less threatening than that, pesky fairies, diseased rodents, whatever-those-imaginary-things were that Loony Lovegood asserted could gnaw on one's brains? They'd have to take a number, because she just didn't have space for b-list fears.
At least, until one of the shrubs shuddered with a feral growl.
Covered in twigs, more emaciated than the last time she had spotted him, Ginny spied that black dog - the overlarge over grumpy one - crouched under a bush. He sniffed the air twice before dipping his head lower between his shoulders, his growl deepening as his brow lowered over icy gray eyes.
Comparatively, he was low threat, so Ginny didn't bother reacting. If he hadn't eaten her last time, he was unlikely to now, though she mentally said goodbye to half her dinner sandwich. "Hello again," she sighed, shrugging her satchel back up onto her shoulder.
Despite her greeting, the underfed canine growl turned sinister. His bared teeth dripped with saliva as he snarled with undisguised malice.
"For Merlin's sake," Ginny whined, too heartsore for nonsense. "We've met, I fed you. I'll feed you again, but-"
His eyes drifted closed as he seemed to sniff the air once more. Then, before Ginny could unwrap the sandwich, they popped open.
A dark blur of movement, he bounded toward Ginny, paws uplifted as he knocked her back into the pillar. A snap, a growl, a blur of fangs and teeth.
But those teeth didn't tear out her throat, break skin or sever a limb – instead the demon dog's jaw locked on Ginny's shoulder strap. With manic shakes of his maw, he tore the bag from Ginny.
But she had grown up with brothers and tug of war was as much surprise and reflex. Before he could retreat with his prize, Ginny lunged toward the dangling strap. "That's mine!" she tugged, trying to wrest her belongings from the ungrateful canine before he could pull her arm out of its socket. "The food is in the other bag, you dimwit!"
But the dog didn't understand or didn't care because he tugged so hard Ginny's battered satchel strap frayed, unwinding until the last thread snapped with a final twang. Her bag tumbled away. The dog leaped on it, dragging it through the shrubbery onto an overgrown dirt path that dropped out of sight towards the castle's foundation.
Still clutching her sandwich bag, Ginny chased after him. "Bring that back! That's my stuff and – and my essay, dammit!"
Her heels dug into the dirt, skidding down a path that would have been invisible to anyone who wasn't leaning over the wall of the courtyard above. Steep, but not unmanageable, she chased the bounding dog as the ground leveled out, only catching up because he had paused to snarl at her bag, ripping it into pieces.
Then, as if it was unsatisfied with only finding books and parchment, he snarled again. Circling it twice, he growled until he collapsed on his forelegs, his eyes closing with a mournful howl.
"No, no no no," Ginny cried, her bag's contents scattered on the dark hillside. The dog paid her no mind. It no longer looked as if it were to put up a fight. Dejected, as if it had thought it was to find pirate treasure at the end of a grand quest only to find leprechaun gold disappearing beneath his snout, he stared unseeing at Ginny's belongings.
Ginny, equally dejected, gathered up a six-inch roll of damp parchment. "You've chewed up my essay! That's the second draft! Rat pellets on the first one, doggy drool on the second? How many times am I going to have to rewrite this thing?"
Not that it had made any difference with her boggart. Ashamed, she tried to keep that image at bay, not ready to face the failure.
"I don't even-" Ginny trailed off, as she stared back up towards the castle. The courtyard was high above. If she followed the path around the base of the castle walls, Ginny figured she'd end up on the gamekeeper's side of the lake. She wasn't too terribly far from Hagrid's hut but the ground was too steep for the path to be frequently traversed.
Her skin prickled. There was nothing here. Except the stone of the castle rising on her left, covered in crawling vines.
But there was something there. She knew it.
She couldn't see anything, but she felt… something.
That goosefleshy, walking-over-someone's-grave feeling. The tingle of a hexed broom she had once mistaken as thrill rather than magic. Not quite as noticeable as Professor Barkerboxes "Go Away" ward, but similar.
Ginny's eyes narrowed, peering at the path, the castle, the shrubs, the mud, the castle again.
"Not as noticeable as a ward," she breathed, unconcerned about the dog or her essay or dementors as she spoke to no one but herself. "Notice-me-not spell?"
Her brothers hadn't taught her that one. Fred and George cited the need to retain their strategic advantage, but Ginny knew enough about that spell. Notice-me-not didn't exactly hide, didn't exactly deter, it just made it easier for eyes to slide over something.
But they didn't work if a person knew something was there. They could trick senses, but not knowledge.
And with growing realization, Ginny knew she knew.
Somewhere in her mind, the knowledge, that memory existed, and she knew something was there. Ginny crept forward, as if reeled on a line, following the path further until it twisted toward the base of the castle and stopped for no reason in front of the solid stone foundation
She knelt by the base of the wall, where the trail ended. Or rather, where the trail intersected with the wall, because on second glance, it looked as if it just continued right through the stone.
Before she could think, before she could decide, before she could talk herself out of it and remember that it was wise to "always check ward first," Ginny reached out to touch the wall.
Her hand went straight through.
A snuffled sound behind her startled Ginny enough to yank her arm back. She had forgotten the dog, who no longer looked as if he were going to attack her. She glanced over her shoulder at him. "Yeah. I know. Like Platform Nine and…weird."
It ignored her. Instead, his head tilted as it stared at the place where her hand had disappeared.
Eyes wide open, before she could talk herself out of it, Ginny stepped through the wall – she wasn't patient enough to come up with a plan B, her hand had gone through just fine, and if some spell were to fry her like bacon, at least she wouldn't ever have to go to Charms club again.
()()()
()()()
Watery blue light flickered from three torches in the secret room, larger than a garden shed but only half the size of a classroom. The castle's warming spells kept the air tepid, dry and weatherproof, but the room itself seemed forgotten by the castle's elves if the dusty mess were an indication.
Forgotten or removed from memory, save for a glimpse along the tiny crack in her own. Ginny didn't need to pivot to know she'd see an archway on this side of the wall, illusioned to be undetectable from the outside, invisible to anyone but him.
Or the people he was possessing.
Sickened by the thought, Ginny ignored the dog as he bounded behind her, that exclusive list now including the canine.
Disoriented, the dog whirled, growling at the arch. As if to test it worked from both sides, he darted out. With a shiver, he crept back in, stomach low to the ground, as if suspicious the room would still be there. The cerulean torches created a monstrous shadow of his form as he stalked the room, pacing like a beast in captivity.
Slytherin torches. Chamber torches, that haunting glow reflected on the top of her shoes. As different from the warm golden crackles of fire in Gryffindor fireplace as moondust from sunshine. As different as the Ginny he lifted up to the Ginny he left lying on a damp floor, tangled in her own strings.
As if in a trance, the emaciated dog nosed an invisible trail along the floor. He paused at each bit of debris scattered about the room as if the scent could tell a story of what this place was.
Ginny could have told him outright. She wasn't aware she had backed away until the curve of the archway pressed against her spine. Sliding down the wall, she curled as close to the exit as she could without toppling out.
Hackles rising, the dog approached a pile of black cloth in the far corner, nose nudging the folds.
Slowly, so so slowly, his head twisted toward Ginny. Absurdly, accusation seemed to fester within those cold gray eyes.
But absurd or not, Ginny crumpled, hugging her knees to her chest. She had to. She needed her whole body compressed to contain the scream forming so deep in her core it would topple the castle. Words bled into her brain, as if her mind were a diary page. Phrases that described the mess scattered on the stone floor.
Broken quill.
Tiny fingernail crescents with pale pink polish, ragged and chewed.
That pile of black, a faded robe with mended hems. A building rumble from the dog's chest as he scented the sleeves with their darkened spots, splattered with bloodstains, dried and crusted over time.
"I favored that nail color, last year." Each word scraped out Ginny's throat, dragged along gravel. "I don't bother anymore. Harpies green is against dress code, but that barely-there-pink… I used to be good at colovaria. Before it stopped mattering."
She had worn her spare robe for most of last year. It had been a mystery where the better one had disappeared, elbows less frayed with the crisp collar.
"Where in the mind is memory?" Ginny whispered, trying to recall being in this place, but having no memory of it despite surrounding proof she'd been a visitor. "I don't know how I knew this place was here, except that he knew it. So I know it."
No reply. No answer. Just the cool blue flicker of magic torches.
Eyes unfocused, she stared at the light he favored, reflecting like water on dark stone. An unbelievable scoff escaped her throat. "How many secret lairs does your standard dark wizard need, do you suppose?"
She ripped her gaze from that blue glow before she drowned in the hiss of subterranean puddles and basilisk fangs.
But that bony black dog only growled in response. Incensed, it was Ginny's turn for raised hackles.
"One? Two?" Ginny growled back. "Perhaps there's a 'How to Be a Dark Wizard' guide. Required: at least three evil lairs, one with airy southern exposure for the five days of summer they get in the highlands."
But her fight burned quick, leaving only ashes of indignation.
"This was a starter cave for him, I think." Unbidden, her gaze flicked to the abandoned robes. They reminded of her of something, but she couldn't remember what. "Repurposed as a closet for stowing inconvenient evidence of foul play."
Ginny snorted in bitter amusement. "Oh, see what I did there? Foul play."
The dog didn't move, the blue glow reflected in his gaze.
"No, I suppose you don't," Ginny snapped, sarcastically. "Foul play. Foul. Poultry. Chickens. The sleeve bloodstains? Dead roosters. Those?"
Her voice cracked, as those secondhand robes with the hems her Mum had lovingly mended and pressed drew her gaze like a magnet. "Murder robes. His choice. His intent. His plan. My robes."
Robes crumpled, abandoned behind a curtain. Lying on the ground, now their part was over. Tangled, unable to move on their own.
Without someone moving the arms and legs what were they?
As if yanked from above, Ginny sprang to her feet, fumbling for her wand. The dog drew back with a betrayed snarl, but Ginny wasn't aiming at him. Instead, she thrust her wand at last year's cloak and shoved every morsel of power she had through that blasted ebony stick. "INCENDIO!"
However, the robes did not disintegrate in a blazing inferno.
Instead, Ginny's spell vibrated back up her arm, a sunburnt pain blasting her palm.
"Frotzing halibu-" Ginny dropped her wand, eyes squeezed as if her face muscles could banish the sting. Hopping up and down she flapped her hand to cool the fingers which felt as if they'd gripped a frying pan without a mitt. "That wand is useless!"
Plopping onto the ground in frustration, she snatched the wand and verbally abused it. "You're flighty and obnoxious, judgmental and useless."
The dog flinched, drawing Ginny's attention. "Oh, stop looking at me like that," she snapped. "I wasn't addressing you."
His responding snarl was half-hearted at best. A slight tick in his lowered brow – perhaps it was the light – but for a split second he appeared wounded. His aggressive expression flickered, the barest breath of an instant, revealing only a tired, bony, matted, pathetic sort of thing.
And all Ginny's fight fled again, because she felt like a tired, bony, matted, pathetic sort of thing.
Weren't they the pair….
"Are-are you hungry?" She shouldn't feel guilty. He ravaged her satchel, now in pieces on the hillside. "Don't answer that. Look at those small bones. Of course you're hungry."
Readying herself for inevitable rejection, she nonetheless reached for the forgotten bagged sandwich she dropped on the floor. "You're the one who attacked me. So, this isn't a peace offering. You're a charity case."
The dog somehow managed to scoff and growl at the same time, until Ginny realized the growl had come from her stomach, not the charity case's.
"I hope you have no allergic or religious objections to-" she lifted the bread. "-cold fish fingers on toast. Oh look, there's a tomato so that makes it healthy." With a vicious tear, Ginny ripped the oversized sandwich in two, sliding the larger half over to the panting dog.
He tore into it with an uncivilized snarl. Ginny, equally uncivilized, did the same.
Two bites in, Ginny wondered if the kitchen elves thought she was the charity case.
Uncomfortable eating in silence, Ginny's eyes drifted to those tiny pale-pink crescents. "Why do you suppose he bit my nails?"
The dog only spared her a half-second glance before he resumed chomping on his sandwich.
"You're only bored because you have no idea who 'he' is." The sandwich hit like lead in her stomach, so she set it down. "It's a long story, but you're not holding up your end of the conversation, so here goes: this is not my cave. The stuff is my stuff, I know that you know it smells like me. But this is not my cave. Lucius Malfoy-"
The feral dog paused mid-bite.
"-oh, that's not the 'he'." Ginny assured. "But I get he already sounds like a wanker. He is. Lucius Malfoy? Total wanker. Now, don't interrupt me again, I have a tendency to digress and I might have to start over."
Ginny could feel his eyes on her as the dog gave the half-eaten sandwich a lick, ears at attention.
"So recap: Lucius Malfoy, complete wanker, snuck a cursed diary into my cauldron because my Dad – not a wanker – broke Malfoy's nose in Flourish and Blotts."
Her dog chuffed, a snuffled sort of sound.
"That's nose isn't important. What's important is the diary belonged to Tom Riddle – complete tosser– who renamed himself Voldemort – same tosser with tossage exponentially increased –"
She didn't even want to say the next part. Not even to a dog that didn't speak English. A dog who had stilled, not a single twitch, the hairs on his neck standing on end.
"I wrote stuff." Ginny said, pale-pink soft. "That's what people typically do with diaries. But he wrote stuff back – which is admittedly less typical. And, you know," Ginny broke off. "We don't really need to talk about the details. Pfft details," she added, a limp joke that didn't land at all.
"The takeaway, the important part is he possessed me. He was able to steer me around this castle last year, using my mouth to speak and my legs to move and my hands to…I-I don't even remember half of what happened last year. But I know about it. Everyone knows about it."
She leaned back against the wall, daring to speak words in territory that wasn't hers.
"I could never have dreamed the horrible things he did." she confessed, half a whisper. "We did?"
She wiped her nose on her sleeve and looked up at the ceiling. His ceiling. His refuge before he found his inheritance. "Do- do you have any idea how sideways life can go when you trust the wrong person?"
Ginny dared the judgement of her dinner companion, the silence heavy between them. He hadn't moved. Perhaps she was projecting, or so needy for a sympathetic ear, but maybe he knew. Maybe his last owner wasn't good, and maybe that's why he was skin and bones and appeared as stricken and distrustful as she.
"I thought he was my friend. He betrayed me," she spoke the words as if they still surprised her. "How does one ever recover from that? How do you ever have a real conversation without remembering what misplaced trust can do? When you know that trust was twisted and used to hurt someone else?"
Her appetite ruined, Ginny pushed the remainder of her sandwich to the dog as she grasped at words. "I understand intention matters. I didn't choose to hurt anyone. I know that. But there's a difference between what I know and what I feel."
The dog's shoulders slumped as he chuffed again. He stared at that sandwich, apparently frozen.
"It doesn't matter whether it's my fault - I'm disappointed in myself all the same." She tried to explain to a dog, or herself. "And-and it's not in that Mum 'you forgot to dry the dishes, Ginny, I'm so disappointed in you' harmless way. It's deeper."
She wasn't the person she thought she was, that person who was going to fly for the Harpies and be brilliant and brave and strong. That person who never really existed outside her own head.
"I can't stop thinking that if I could have… I mean, if- if there was one little thing I didn't do, or if I could have figured out how to swerve left instead of being steered right that things would be different now."
The dog twitched.
"Better."
A slight whine. Soulful. It sounded banana-shaped somehow.
"I can't help but see all the potential futures from that first moment I wrote in that diary. Better futures than this one, this one that seems so frotzed-" Ginny shuddered, as she dug deep for the real word. "Fucked. Everything got so fucked up. That one moment. That one thing, led to another thing, which led to another and another. So many other moments too, where, if I had just done… something else. Anything else," she said helplessly. "But I did exactly what he wanted."
Those abandoned robes in the corner mocked her. She had searched for them, under the bed, the bathroom, every classroom, every hall. She had thought they were stolen, but Tom reminded her that no one would want secondhand robes, strings hidden by a mended hem.
"I didn't even know I was losing time for months. I was so scared," she whispered. A confession, an admission, a flaw in an opera glass or snuffbox. "I was scared all the time.
"Maybe that's why he bit my nails. To keep me scared," she said, staring at the graveyard of pale pink crescents.
"He controlled me. Biting nails, drawing on my arm, deliberating misplacing a sock. Tiny things to remind me he was in control, he could do anything."
She shut her eyes. "The fear of what he could do, what I could imagine him doing, was worse than anything he did. Insignificant amount of effort, honestly. It's shameful. Really, he didn't even have to be creative about it - that was left to me. He was in control and he didn't have to do anything except keep me scared."
She leaned back, her spine unable to keep her upright.
"Can I tell you a secret?" With a weary sigh of resignation, Ginny answered her own question. "Course I can. Since you aren't a diary, a tea-plying professor, or a homicidal wanker in disguise."
But she couldn't even look at the dog, this time. Each word so shameful, she could only stare at the opposite wall, as if it were a pulley dragging each phrase from the darkest parts of her soul.
"Some days, I don't want to crawl out of bed in the morning. I wake up, and there's that moment of panic, when I'm still dozing. When I'm not awake enough to know if I'm in the same place I fell asleep until I hear my dormmates muck around."
"Confession," Ginny snorted, disgusted and amused at her own words. "I literally do not know the first names of my dormmates. At a certain point, it's too late to ask and I can't even bring myself to care. That's not the confession part, though.
"The confession – the one that I don't want to be true - is everyday it gets harder and harder to drag myself out of that bed."
Her words hung in the air, secret words in the secret cave that was his. Words that conveyed just how different he made her, from the Ginny she used to be.
"There are sixty-five days left until I get to leave this castle for Christmas holidays." All the tea in China hadn't pulled this many words out of her, the only consolation she had was those words were still hidden, here in the dark. "And every single day feels like a hundred years. And I know that the dementors aren't helping, but it's not just the dementors.
"I used to jump out of bed. Brooms to fly, trees to climb, brothers to annoy, adventures to plan. But now?"
The secret shameful words she didn't want anyone she loved to hear.
"Every day lasts a thousand years and every day it gets harder and harder to leave the bed in the morning."
An unmerry snort rose unbidden from her chest. Because it was funny, in a way. It was almost funny how life had set her up and then kicked her in the teeth. "But today? Today, I bounded out of bed because today was the day I was going to kick Tom Riddle's arse."
Pathetic.
"Today was the day I would smack him down. Even if it was only a boggart version. Today I would do what I should have done before and I'd be able to move on."
It was almost funny, like it was supposed to go all wrong just so she would finally understand how futile it all was. "He didn't show up. I have no idea what that boggart was – my boggart – or what it means. And I don't want to think about that-"
Half-freckled face dancing on strings.
"B-because now it's night." Ginny twisted unnecessarily. Beyond the one-way arch, the world was dark and bleak. "And I have to go back into that castle and walk by all the people who sneer and whisper and I have to crawl into bed and pull the curtains and try to fall asleep so I can do the exact same nothing tomorrow. And it will be that much harder to get out of bed."
The very last bit of her confession wrung out of her throat, as that dog wobbled to his feet, the soft pad of each footfall reminding her he was still in the room.
"And I have no idea how I'm going to do it."
Hollowed, emptied of words and unburdened by festering feelings, Ginny examined Tom's starter cave again.
She needed to leave. Bad enough he once threatened her skeleton would lie in the chamber forever. Such a downgrade to have her skeleton rot in his lame-arse starter lair.
Ginny shivered at the morbidly absurd thought. She needed to leave, but she couldn't bring the starving dog back into the castle. He hadn't finished her half of the sandwich, but he might want it later. He might want the whole thing. The sandwich. Tom's cave.
So slowly, as if every muscle were weighted, Ginny pulled herself to her feet. She trudged over to the robe abandoned on the floor, fluffed it and folded it neatly in the single clean corner of the alcove. "Here. Probably more comfortable than being outside, sleeping under the bushes."
The dog sniffed the robes, his teeth bared when he got to the stain on the sleeve.
"I'm not claiming it's cozy or smells good. But it's drier and warmer in here than the highlands in October. Dementor free."
The dog plopped down where he was before, next to the slobbery sandwich.
"It's alright if you don't want to," Ginny wished she were as adept at cleaning spells as her Mum. "Murder robes wouldn't be my first choice for a bed."
The dog chuffed, then his head lifted, almost as if he were surprised the sound came from his own throat.
"You object on principle." Ginny muttered. "I would, too. After all, that cloak was the last thing those cluckers saw. I wouldn't want to sleep on the Hood of the Poultry Reaper. The Shroud of the Cockadoodle Dueler."
Her head snapped up when she heard the alarming sound of the dog choking. A strange rhythmic snuffle. If the dog had been a kneazle, Ginny would have thought it was a hairball.
"Fine. Be that way." Ginny snapped, stepping away from the robes. "I was being nice. You don't have to like me. I don't like me either. I just thought you'd appreciate being warm."
If this cave were absorbed by the rest of the castle, she wouldn't miss it. It should be wiped out of existence. Nonetheless, that dog pulled himself to his feet. With a sigh, he circled those robes. Then, he took a sleeve in his jaw and tossed them, ducking under a corner until he was half-covered.
"Oh," Ginny blinked in surprise. "Alright then."
She bent to tuck in the other side, but he growled and snapped at Ginny.
She drew back, her hands held where he could see them. "I get it. We're not friends. You can go back to being my very ungrateful charity case."
That awful snuffle sound escaped him again, but Ginny pretended not to notice. Instead, she pushed the sandwich closer to his muzzle, so he wouldn't have to leave his cover if he decided he was hungry again.
She waited to see if he'd eat, but he didn't. Somehow, he seemed even more emaciated covered under her small robes.
The only creature in the whole castle perhaps more pathetic than she was.
"I'll nick some food from the kitchens and leave it here in the morning before everyone gets up," she thought out loud. "I'll eat with you and use the official breakfast block to sneak into the third year boys' dorm. Works out, it's a win-win because that's the only time other than the holiday feasts, where Gryffindor tower is all emptied out for proper toad and rat-napping."
The dog's head shot up underneath the robe.
"But you don't have to be here or eat it if you don't want," Ginny sighed, exhausted and unable to manage his emotions along with her own. She stood. "I'll leave the food anyway, but…"
Ginny trailed off, knowing it was futile to explain that keeping a stray dog from starving was as good a reason as any to drag herself out of bed. Between her boggart, ghosts, peers, tea, stupid-clubs, missing freckles… she wasn't sure she could do it for her, anymore.
But she'd do it for the emaciated canine ribs she'd been able to count.
Before she left, she spared one last glance for the dog, circling the corner, murder robe hanging off his back. He curled up in a ball, his wasted body disappearing under the snug folds.