Memoirs of a Red Headed Witch by My Wicked Quill
Summary: Ginny Weasley was always overlooked. Always the youngest, always the smallest, and was never really given the chance to let her voice be heard. But sometimes the best insight comes from those who were always in the background. Her story of redemption, loyalty and love, proves that she was never just the Weasley brothers' little sister.
Rating: PG-13
Categories: Pre-OotP, Post-OotP, Post-HBP, Post-Hogwarts, Post-DH/AB
Characters: None
Genres: None
Warnings: None
Challenges: None
Series: None
Published: 2010.07.18
Updated: 2021.05.09
Memoirs of a Red Headed Witch by My Wicked Quill
Chapter 4: Bleeding Between The Lines
Author's Notes: Entry 4
Bleeding Between the Lines
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
“You saw me there, but never knew
That I would give it all up to be
A part of this, a part of you.
And now it's all too late. So you see...
You could've helped if you had wanted to
But no one notices until it's too late to do anything
So how can I ever try to be better?
Nobody ever lets me in
I can still see you.
This ain't the best view
On the outside looking in…”
-The outside, Taylor Swift
Diagon Alley was the most magical just before the start of term. I was so excited to be starting school, that I didn’t even complain that we had to shop for second hand supplies. My family’s monetary struggles were something I was used to and understood despite the downsides. My father worked for the Ministry of Magic in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts office, a not very well paying job, but my father loved what he did. That to me was worth more than any amount of galleons.
Walking down Diagon Alley with my entire family, Hermione Granger and Harry Potter was a great way to remember the start of my first school year experience. I remember that summer my mother had become completely enthralled by an author named Gilderoy Lockhart. She read anything he wrote, not to mention thought he was absolutely adorable. And she wasn’t the only one. When we heard that Lockhart was going to be signing books at the shop named Flourish and Blotts she made sure to drag us all along.
Gilderoy Lockhart was just as charming as I thought he would be. It was ridiculous. As handsome as he was, his theatrical personality was completely over the top. But my mother loved it, and I had to admit…I did to.
It all started the moment Lockhart saw Harry Potter standing in the crowd.
“It can’t be Harry Potter?” (COS page60)
Harry stiffened and I could tell he wanted to slip away into a dark corner. But Lockhart wasn’t going to have any of that. He jumped into the audience and plucked Harry out and onto the stage with him. Harry was blushing but the crowd was loving it. Photographers went wild.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” announced Lockhart, “What an extraordinary moment this is! The perfect moment for me to make a little announcement I’ve been sitting on for some time! I have great pleasure and pride in announcing that this September, I will be taking up the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!”
The crowd exploded in cheers. It was rather exciting; I was going to be taught by such a renowned wizard, whose tales and adventure in all his books were utterly fascinating.
Lockhart thrusted his complete works into Harry arms- as a great publicity move no doubt- and Harry sauntered out of the lime light towards me.
“You have these,” (COS page61) he told me, placing the new books inside my new cauldron. I beamed. “I’ll buy my own-”
“Bet you loved that didn’t you, Potter?” Interrupted a silver-haired boy with a wicked glare.
Based on the stories Ron had told me from his first year at school I could tell the boy was Draco Malfoy.
The Malfoy family was an awful lot, many nights my father would return home from work furious about his latest encounter with Lucius Malfoy, Draco’s father, who also worked for the Ministry. They were an old pure-blooded family, with a long line of wizarding ancestry. They were rich, powerful and rotten to the core. Draco had started his first year alongside my brother, Harry and Hermione and it was already established they were to be school rivals. After all, Draco and his family were all Slytherins, of course.
“Famous Harry Potter,” continued Malfoy, “Can’t even go into a bookshop without making the front page.”
His demeaning sneer, it —well- it pissed me off. “Leave him alone,” I sneered back. “He didn’t want all that!”
Malfoy seemed amused at my outburst, “Potter, you’ve got yourself a girlfriend!”
That was so much worse than putting my elbow in the butter dish. My face was radiating so much heat I almost started to sweat.
I had never been so happy to see Ron in my life as he and Hermione interrupted the conversation, “Oh it’s you,” he said.
As Malfoy began to insult my family’s financial status, I was glad to note that my father was coming to break up the scene.
But just as Harry and Hermione were holding Ron back from pummeling Draco, Lucius Malfoy appeared.
“Well, well, well- Arthur Weasley.” (COS page62)
“Lucius,” dad said shortly.
“Busy time at the Ministry, I hear, all those raids…I hope they are paying you overtime?”
Mr. Malfoy reached into my cauldron and before I could move away, he grabbed one oy my books to examine it. His height was daunting and this long silver hair was too pristine. He made me completely uneasy, and it wasn’t just because he was looking distastefully at the second hand text book.
“Obviously not,” he said. “Dear me, what’s the use of being a disgrace to the name of wizard if they don’t even pay you well for it?”
Weasley was a very old pure blood line as well, but as snobbish as the Malfoy’s were, they, along with many other traditional wizarding families believed that Half-Blood wizards and Muggle-Borns were second rate and did not belong in the wizarding community. For centuries this ideal had been a political struggle. You-Know-Who was after the purification of the wizarding world: extermination of Muggle-Borns, Half-Bloods…and muggles. But You-Know-Who had been defeated and his followers were silenced. Thanks to Harry Potter.
Malfoy’s opinion that my family were traitors to the Pure-Blood line was a ridiculous and ancient notion. Not to mention immoral. Just because we associated with all witches, wizards and muggles alike only made us decent human beings. The fact that my father worked for the Ministry in a muggle department didn’t make him a disgrace. It made him wonderful.
Dad’s eyes narrowed to slits, “We have a very different idea of what disgraces the name of wizard, Malfoy.”
“Cleary,” Mr. Malfoy replied, placing a hand on Draco’s shoulder and glancing at Hermione, who everyone knew had muggle parents. “The company you keep, Weasley and I thought your family could sink no lower-”
Uncharacteristically, my father lost his temper, and well, threw himself at Malfoy. Had I now been so completely shocked I may have held my cauldron a bit tighter when my father flew past and it wouldn’t have been ripped from my grasp.
Everyone gasped as Malfoy and my father disappeared in a cloud of books. My own books had gone flying everywhere and I scrambled around trying to grab them all as Fred and George cheered my father on and the clerks tried to control the situation.
I had never seen my father in a brawl before. I thought it was bloody brilliant. My mother, however, did not.
When my father and Malfoy were separated Malfoy was still holding my book. “Here girl,” (COS page63) he growled,
“Take your book- it’s the best your father can give you.” With that, he shoved the book forcefully and uneasily back into my cauldron, grabbed Draco’s collar and dragged him out of the shop.
The lot of us left immediately, not wanting to cause any more trouble.
“You alright there, Ginny? Were you able to grab all your belongings?” Harry’s timid voice came from beside me out on the street. I could tell he was thinking the whole scene was his fault.
“Err-Uh-Yes,” I said, blushing. “…Thanks,” I managed but he was already catching up to Ron and Hermione.
I realized that until that incident, Harry hadn’t ever even heard my voice. Not a bad way to have started, if I do say so myself.
My first year started just the same way it started for young witch or wizard taking their first steps in Hogwarts. Nervous and excited, not sure what to expect, though I had six older brothers who could very well tell me what to look out for, their words of wisdom were roughly the same.
“When you see the cat, run in the other direction, and you’ll be fine.”
So when professor McGonagall lead the first years in my class down the entrance hall, I knew we were being sorted into our Hogwarts houses, but not much else. When I saw Filtch for the first time holding Ms. Norris in the corner of the room, I got the picture.
As my name was called to be sorted, I caught eyes with Fred, George and Percy, they nodded slightly, as though it was obvious already what my fate would be. I was under a lot of pressure; the entire pure-blood line of Weasley’s had been accepted with open arms into Gryffindor the home of the courageous and noble, watch my luck to land anywhere else. I remember my heart pounding in my ears, and yet somehow within all my worries, I managed to notice that Harry was nowhere in the room. Call it my Potter radar that I had acquired that summer (which only grew as time went on) but I knew he wasn’t anywhere near, and that distraction calmed my nerves. The moment the Sorting Hat was set on my head it was speaking.
“And yet another Weasley? I’ve seen enough in my day to make an army. But… ahhh.. Wait, wait! A girl…what have we here?” I could see all the other students waiting on a verdict; I had never heard him speak like that to another first year.
I had no clue when I was eleven that the person who wore the hat was the only one who could hear what it said.
The hat began again, “I feel strength, a power that in unknown…the seventh child in a pure-blood family…the first female in seven generations…they say seven is a lucky number in the Wizarding World. Now down to business, you’d do well in Ravenclaw, but your passion and loyalty make it obvious there is only one house for you…”
I never really gave much thought to what the sorting hat said, though maybe I should have when I went to sit with my brothers I got a clap on the back from my new classmates and pushed it out of my mind. I wondered where Harry and Ron had gone off to. I saw Ron and Harry’s bushy-haired friend Hermione sitting beside George with the same question on her face. She met my gaze and smiled softly and turned her attention back to the first years.
I didn’t take long for the whole school to hear about my brother and Harry’s scene with the flying car and the Whomping Willow. I mean, it was in the paper for crying outload.
My father’s obsession with muggle items saw no bounds. He had charmed a muggle vehicle to be able to fly. Apparently Ron and Harry had missed the train. While I just thought they had gone off without me, it turned out they never made it on the Hogwarts Express. Ron’s brilliant idea of stealing my dad’s car and flying it to the school ended terribly when they landed in the only magical tree on the grounds that can actually kill you.
That was when I started getting an idea of what it was like to go to a Wizarding school with the great Harry Potter, the brightest witch of our age and an army of Weasley boys.
And now I had been thrown into the equation.
But I would have never expected to affect that equation to the extent I did in my first year. To this day it is still hard and painful to think about that time in my life, the time that should have been fun and light hearted, making friends, learning, laughing, but what I got out of my first year was fear and scars that would never truly go away.
I didn't really expect to be hanging around my brothers so much in school. It wasn’t as though I imagined the six of us all eating lunch and dinner together every day and completing homework and joking around and laughing all the time as we did at home. I wasn't upset by the fact that they all had their own lives and friends at school. What bothered me was my utter insignificance.
They acted as though I wasn't even there. The fact that I had five older brothers all living in the same dormitory tower and I never got the slightest bit of recognition from them after the welcome feast was what hurt.
I knew I wasn't in their year, I knew I was just a little first year, but it was as though they were afraid I'd embarrass them for just existing. I was used to them playing the older and wiser card when they were doing something boyish and didn't want me around at home, but they rarely excluded me from the shenanigans as a kid. It seemed as though the moment they all started school I was forgotten and always excluded. I had hoped that once I had started at Hogwarts, perhaps they would begin to see me again.
I was wrong.
I spent a lot of my time watching from the corner of the room as Fred and George joked around with their best friend Lee Jordan, Ron ran around after Harry and Hermione and even Percy, when he wasn't bossing the Gryffindors around as Head Boy was connecting with some girl named Penelope.
Naturally, I knew I was going to be making my own friends but it seemed that my red hair branded me just another Weasley, and the Gryffindors decided that already knew me. So no one tried.
Luna Lovegood was a friend of mine since we were younger. She lived with her father in a cottage near the Burrow and on occasion my mother would have her come play with me at our home when my brothers were away at school. Mum always thought Luna's mother's death was utterly tragic and that, "The girl needed a motherly touch once in a while."
So Luna would come and play with me outside. With so many boys it the house it was nice to have a girl my age to have fun with. I was heartbroken when Luna was sorted into Ravenclaw, the house of intellect and wit.
While I sat beside her in classes, I didn't see her too often. Yet, her friendship was very close to my heart.
I still couldn't help but feel a little jealous at Ron Harry and Hermione. Ron was my closest brother, and I was used to spending time with him. It hurt to see him ignore me so consistently and avoid me so often. I was jealous that Harry liked him so much while I couldn't even form two sentences around Harry. I felt there was this wall I couldn't breech: wall that wasn't allowing me to break through and be myself. There was something holding me back. Something holding me down.
I first noticed the diary the day we got home from Diagon Alley, it was mixed in with my newly bought school supplies as well as the brand new books Harry so graciously gave to me. At the beginning, I thought mum had gotten it for me as a sort of going to school present, it was rater nice, the black leather was trimmed with a gold accent, making it look professional and sophisticated. Naturally, I kept it without question. I planned to write all my experiences at school, but so far all I could come up with was the unfortunate fact that I had to start off with second hand robes and hand-me-down school books, the endless silence of my brothers and the small fact that the boy who had already captured my heart didn’t know I existed. So I started with that.
Only to find that the diary spoke back. I was startled at first but then I realized it must have been charmed to act as a friend in your pocket. He said his name was Tom.
ME:I’m not really sure why I had been so excited to go to Hogwarts, it seems like nothing but work so far, the castle is beautiful, but I felt I would be having more fun by now.
TOM:Well the first few weeks are always the hardest, but don’t worry soon you’ll have more friends than you can count, as long as you don’t forget me.
ME:Tom you don’t honestly think I’d forget my first friend here would you? You’ve been wonderful.
He was kind and understanding, everything I wanted in a friend that I had yet to truly find at school. He gave me advice and tried to cheer me up as he put up with my constant woes about the boy who I wanted so much. I told Tom everything, the entire story of Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. The story I had heard at least a thousand times since I was five.
This seemed to interest him extremely. He asked questions, endless questions about Harry and Voldemort. (Of course back then I still referred to him as You Know Who) so I gave him answers. In the first few months of school I grew closer to Tom than I had to anyone else.
TOM:So this Harry Potter character, he’s done nothing of importance since he defeated the Dark Lord as a child?
ME:Well, last year You-Know-Who came back to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone; he leeched himself onto the back of the head of some teacher. Harry stopped him before it was too late. I wish I could have been here to see that.
TOM:So twice then? He’s defeated the Dark Lord twice?
ME:Isn’t he brilliant?
TOM:Yes. Just brilliant.
Then things started happening. The morning I woke up drenched in blood and feathers I thought it was red paint; I couldn’t for the life of me remember what had happened. I remember that morning as though it were yesterday. I tried so hard to come up with an idea for what had happened that night as a showered, scrubbing off the red substance. I didn’t wasn’t to admit it, but it felt like blood. I came up with nothing.
I was utterly alone. I could tell no one. I was terrified.
That’s when the first attack happened.
I was walking with a few others back to the common room after dinner that night when we passed a corridor that was flooded with water, when I looked up, there was Harry Ron and Hermione looking at the wall on completer horror.
“What do you reckon they’re up to now?” my new friend Colin asked me.
“What do you mean?” the water on the floor was seeping into my shoes as more and more people arrived.
“Your brother, Granger and Potter, they always seem to be causing trouble.”
I thought of their adventure the previous year as well as the flying car incident at the beginning of term. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
I heard gasps and some screams and teachers yelling at students to get out of the way.
The wall has some horrendous writing on it, in what people seemed to think was dripping blood. It looked just like the paint I found all over my hands just hours before. And there was the cat, Ms. Norris, the first victim to be petrified. She was frozen stiff.
I watched from the crowds and Filtch tried to pin the mess on Harry, just because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
All the way back to the common room I had a strange sensation at the back of my mind telling me the words on the wall were more familiar than I realized.
The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir beware.
When we made it upstairs, I went straight to Tom.
The biggest mistake of my life.
ME:It said; the Chamber of Secrets has been opened.
TOM:Wow, that Harry Potter must have some nerve.
ME:It wasn’t him though! I know it wasn’t Harry would never do something like that.
TOM:Not many people have the power to open the Chamber of Secrets Ginevra.
ME:What do you mean? What do you know Tom?
TOM:Ah now you find me so interesting, the past few days it’s as though you’ve forgotten me.
ME:I’m making friends Tom! Aren’t you at all happy for me?
TOM:I miss you that’s all.
ME:I’m not going to stop writing to you I promise.
TOM:Well then, I’ll let you know this, the only way to open the Chamber of Secrets is to be a parsletongue, meaning you can speak to snakes. The only person to have that ability was Salazar Slytherin, and his descendants. Can Harry speak to snakes?
ME:I…I’m not sure.
TOM:Oh and Ginny, you can’t tell anyone what I’ve told you. It might get you into trouble for knowing so much, we must keep it a secret alright?
As time went on, students began to be targeted. Students were being petrified. and I was losing more and more of my memory, I never knew where I had been or what I had been doing during the time of the attacks. Percy kept telling me I was too pale, and not myself, I just figured it had to do with the newly found stress of trying to fill the gaps in my brain.
School was becoming dangerous, and I hated the fact that everyone seemed to turn on Harry. I had heard that during a dueling match in Defense Against the Dark Arts class that Harry had spoken to a snake that was conjured as an offending move. Only, he was speaking in snake language, and everyone heard him.
According what Tom had told me… it wasn’t looking good for Harry.
Students believed him to be the heir of Slytherin, the one who opened the Chamber of Secrets. But I knew deep down Harry would never be something so evil, he was the knight of Gryffindor if anything. Even after my talk with Tom I knew it wouldn’t be Harry, surely there was someone else who could speak to snakes?
ME:So the Chamber of Secrets was created by Salazar Slytherin?
TOM:Yes. When Salazar Slytherin founded Hogwarts he created the Chamber to house his…pet.
ME:Pet?
TOM:Speaking to snakes was a Slytherin trait. The family was rather fond of them.
ME:Are you telling my there are snakes in the Chamber? What for, why did he-
TOM:Lets just say Salazar didn’t like all students at Hogwarts, and well…he made a way to fix that.
ME:How do you know all this?
TOM:The Chamber was opened 50 years ago. I was there, I saw everything.
ME:What???? Do you know who opened it? Do you know who the hair of Slytherin is Tom?
ME:Tom??
TOM:I’m bored of this topic Ginevra. Tell me about Dumbledore, what do you think of him?
Everywhere I went, people were speaking ill of Harry and deep down I worried that it was all my fault, more attacks, no alibi, I started believing I was the one attacking the students. But it was impossible, why would I do something like that, even if I wasn’t in my right mind? I had no idea what could be making me do things like that, if it was me.
I was so scared.
ME:I don’t know what’s happening Tom, more and more people are getting hurt and I can’t figure out where I’ve been most of the time!
TOM:Well, what kind of people exactly are getting hurt?
ME:There was first Mrs. Norris and then my friend Colin and Justin Fitch-Fletchley just the other day, I heard Malfoy talking with some Slytherin about the fact that they are all muggleborns.
TOM:Then it’s alright, everything will work out.
ME:How could you say that Tom? These attacks…they’re horrible!
TOM:I guess I see things in a different perspective.
ME:What perspective?
TOM: Do you really think a mudblood could ever be as powerful as a pure-blooded wizard, Ginevra? Their born from muggles, magic doesn't run through their veins the way it should. Hiding our magic from the muggle world represses our power, yet we are still expected to allow their children into our community? It's a disgrace.
ME: Just because muggleborns' parents aren't magical doesn't mean they are any less talented, Tom! How does this justify students dying here!?
TOM:Have you ever seen the light go out of someone’s eyes, Ginny?
ME: What kind of question is that?
TOM:There is beauty in death. You shouldn’t be so opposed to the idea.
And that’s when I became suspicious of my diary.
Tom had been so intrigued with the attacks going on at school, although I knew he was withholding information from me. He was becoming so close to the situation and close to me as well, it didn’t seem healthy. My gut told me that it was Tom, messing with my head and making me do things. He seemed to get off on the misery I poured into him.
I started having dreams of walking down corridors, day dreams in the middle of class of places in the castle I had never even been and several occurrences of déjà-vu.
Tom’s tone changed almost overnight. He started telling my things about myself I knew I had never told him. He began telling me of his childhood…setting things on fire…watching it burn…
TOM:You know Harry Potter will never look twice at you with all those freckles that mark your face. He’ll be looking for beautiful girls. Even your bothers think nothing of you, you can’t even remember how you managed to get blood all over yourself. You’re worthless.
ME:Please Tom, don’t…I…I’m sorry if I upset you in some way…I -How do you know it was blood? How do you know I have freckles??
TOM:You still haven’t figured it out, you stupid little-
The word he used-it- I can’t repeat it. I won’t. I was a child. A child. He said that to a child.
I snapped the diary shut, in utter shock. I felt so drawn to Tom, what’s why I kept writing, he knew me better than anyone, he opened himself up to me… but I knew it was wrong. I knew something was wrong.
I needed to know where my mum had gotten the diary. Why would she have given me something so…dark? Her response letter came almost immediately.
“Hello, Ginny dear! It has been so strange without you here at home with me, I'm completely alone and I miss your company darling! I hope you are doing well in school; I better not hear from McGonagall that you have been up to trouble with your brothers! Don't let them be a bad influence on you! Did you get the sweets I sent you? I do hope run didn't eat them all, I probably should have sent the package to you directly.
As for this diary you mentioned in the letter you sent- which has been one of only two Ginevra!! I told you I expected you to right more, Oh well, I 'm sure you're busy with all your new friends! Anyway, I'm not sure what this diary is, dear, I've asked your father, but neither of us have bought you any diary, love."
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