CHAPTER TWO

Changes

July 7th

I know now what Bill meant when he talked to me about never being the same again.  Everything changed in one night; even my body changed!  Well of course it had been changing.  That happens when one’s my age; at least that’s what everyone keeps telling me.  Anyway, mum noticed some of the changes when I went home for Christmas break and actually took me shopping for bras!  It didn’t stay a secret for long.

Fred and George found out about it of course and teased me something fierce.  They even hung one rather rakishly from the clock downstairs.  I think they were rather put out that I didn’t have more of a reaction to their little joke.  It just didn’t seem worth getting worked up over.  By that time you see, I’d become well enough acquainted with Tom, and he was already beginning to drain me of much of my energy in order to feed his own needs, so much so that even Fred and George’s pranks couldn’t really bother me anymore.  Nothing seemed to bother me any more.

It wasn’t long after we got back from Christmas break that I tried to get rid of the diary.  It was like waking up from a long, long sleep.  I felt more alive than I had in months.  I even got up enough courage to send that dreadful song to Harry!

Stupid, stupid, stupid!  When that cupid tackled him in the hall and sang him the song I was completely humiliated.  When I saw the diary, Tom’s diary lying amongst the heap of books and quills that had spilled out of Harry’s bag when he fell I nearly died.  I was of course worried that perhaps Tom would spill my secrets for Harry to read, but more than that was the pull, the call that I received from the diary.  It was almost like a voice in my head, “Ginevra, my beautiful Ginevra!  Why did you leave me?  Come back to me!  Ginevra!”

It wasn’t a call I could resist.  I took the diary back, making it look as if someone had been ransacking Harry’s room.  I can’t believe that I was able to do something so vindictive to Harry, but as soon as I touched the diary I felt Tom’s anger and hatred pour into me. 

He wanted to hurt Harry.  He wanted me to hurt Harry!  As strong as his emotions were, I couldn’t bring myself to hurt Harry himself, so I ravaged his belongings.  Merlin, the guilt that I felt after that nearly drowned out Tom’s feelings, it nearly destroyed me altogether!  Sometimes I wonder if that wouldn’t have been so very bad, considering what I went through.

But anyway, at Christmas, like I said, mum noticed that my body was changing.  She even asked me if that had put in an appearance yet.  I think she was expecting me to say yes.  Looking back now I think it would have, my body was certainly ready, and I think I would have started sooner if my body and soul hadn’t been frozen by the pure evil in Tom Riddle’s mind.

I know that sounds sappy, to say that my soul was frozen, but I have good reason for putting it that way.  You see, when Tom was destroyed and the spell he’d held over me was broken, it was as if something inside of me thawed quite suddenly.  To say that I was mortified when Madam Pomfrey saw the state of my sheets that first morning that I woke up in the Hospital wing would be putting it mildly, but she merely laughed it off, saying that she’d helped hundreds of girls over the years and showed me a few simple hygienic charms to keep myself clean and free of cramps.

Still, in spite of my best efforts I can’t help but associate my rescue from the chamber with the ‘waking up’ of my body.  And I can’t help but wonder if somehow Harry Potter (my hero?  Yes, quite literally actually) is destined to play a part in another awakening.

Damn< i>but that sounds corny, tacky even.  But I’m simply being honest with myself.  I deceived myself for so long you see.  I let Tom deceive me for so long that I now refuse to be deceived by anyone or anything.  If that means refusing to allow myself to drift in some fantasy world in regard to life in general and Harry Potter in particular, so be it. 

It’s no great secret that for the longest time I had a crush, the biggest crush ever actually, on Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived.

Ginny paused again in her writing, looking at the word she had written.  Had.  Past tense.  Was she really ‘over’ her pathetic crush?

I can honestly say that I no longer have any silly fantasies regarding the boy who rescued me from the Chamber of Secrets in June.  Hell, any fantasy that I could possibly have come up with couldn’t compete with reality!  (How many times have I sworn in this entry alone?  Having six older brothers is rubbing off on me I think.  Fred and George would be proud!)  

I know now that he’s just Harry, and what he did is just what Harry does. I understand now, I truly do.  He would have done the same for anyone, O.K., well maybe not Malfoy, but it wasn’t necessarily for me.

I can’t help but admire his courage though.  Courage coupled with stupidity mind you, for he could have been killed and his life, and the future of our world could have been lost because a silly little girl who was lonely and love struck, in her desperation befriended the sixteen year old shade of the darkest mind to ever walk our planet.

July 8th

I stopped the sleeping draughts when I left Hogwarts and I knew I’d have bad dreams, but really, this is getting downright ridiculous!  This is the seventh night I’ve been home and the first time in seven nights that I haven’t woken the whole house up with my screams at reliving the moment Tom came out of his diary and forced himself into my mind.

I got some incredulous looks when I came down to breakfast.  Mum and dad actually looked refreshed instead of haggard, and the circles under Percy’s eyes weren’t nearly as noticeable.  I wish that I could have felt as good as they did, but it did make me feel better to know that they’d gotten some well-deserved sleep.

Everyone has been real supportive and helpful.  But they’re all still dreadfully worried.  I can see it in mum’s eyes and the set of dad’s shoulders.  Percy’s been treating me as if I were some sort of fragile glass ornament and even Fred and George have laid off their continual teasing, which has got to be a first.  (That one’s even got mum stumped.  She suspects that they are up to something nasty I expect).

I see Bill every Sunday, he Appartes in to go over our dance routines and to take me in town to Ms. Benchley’s studio for my Pointe Lessons.  I’ve told him that I can go myself, but he says that he wouldn’t miss it for the world.  He’s the one who got me started dancing after all back when I was just four years old and he needed a dance partner. He says that he loves to watch me dance.

Well that’s probably a good thing then, because I love to dance and, to be perfectly honest, lately it is only when I’m dancing that I can feel completely free of everything. 

When I’m dancing I’m not worrying about my parents or my brothers.  When I’m dancing there is no school, no Tom Riddle, and no Harry, just me, completely free to be myself.  I enjoy it so much that I had dad put up a bare in my room.  I’ve been working on my routines and dance exercises a couple of hours every day on my own.

Mum doesn’t understand my love of dancing.  She was never tolerant of it, even before all of this happened.  If it had been up to her she would never have paid for all my dance lessons, but dad insisted, and since Bill has been paying for all my dance clothes and shoes and things since he started working, she really doesn’t have much to complain about.

It really annoys her that I spend so much time dancing. She is continually getting on me to do something more productive (her word) with my time.  She’s suggested knitting (boring!) or gardening.  I pointed out that I already have a garden, but she was talking about a vegetable garden!  Sorry mum, too practical.  I much prefer my flowers!

But while everyone (with the exception of Bill) has been handling me with kid gloves (Bill, thank Merlin, treating me very much as he ever has), Ron and I have actually been getting closer.  We’ve been talking more — not about that- I don’t know if there is anyone, with the possible exception of Harry who would understand what I went through (and he’s not about to sit down and discuss the finer points of Tom Riddle’s personality with me anytime in the near future).  Ron and I have actually been talking; about school and Hermione (it’s all I can do not to laugh out loud at the sappy look he gets on his face when he talks about her!) And he’s even teaching me how to play Wizard’s chess, his way.  Percy taught me the basics years ago, but I hardly ever get the chance to practice.  I think in his own way Ron is trying to cheer me up.  I don’t know if I should be glad, or offended.

Ginny paused, looking down at the words she had written on the page.  What were words, anyway?  Were they simply marks on a page that people’s brains interpreted as having meaning, as representing ideas?  Did that mean that if she didn’t write something down it didn’t actually exist?  Perhaps if she never wrote her dreams down they would just go away.

Yeah right.  And tomorrow I’ll wake up to find that I’m shagging Harry Potter and Playing Chaser for Gryffindor!

Ginny snorted in amusement.  Then sighed heavily.  Last night’s dream hadn’t been like the others.  She had woken up in a cold sweat, her sheets all tangled into knots, that much was true, but she hadn’t woken up screaming and flailing.  If that constituted an improvement, well, she guessed she’d take whatever she could get.

No.  Last night she’d seen the whole incident with the Chamber of Secrets from Harry’s point of view.  She’d seen herself as he’d seen her; lying on the floor at the stone statue’s feet. She’d heard him call out to her, fear and desperation in his voice.

“Ginny!  Please don’t be dead Ginny!  Oh please don’t be dead!”

Sweet Merlin!  She’d seen him holding her in his arms!  She’d seen Tom toying with Harry’s wand, keeping it just out of his grasp, revealing his true name and identity, calling forth the Basilisk and then the battle!  Good Lord, so much blood!  And Fawkes, Fawkes had been brilliant!  The sword, its rubies glowing in the Chamber’s dim light and Harry at last killing the beast with one well-aimed blow.  But the fang!  He’d been bitten!  Oh my God he’s going to die!  How come Harry hadn’t told anyone about that?

She watched Fawkes lay his gorgeous head on Harry’s wound and let his tears heal the cut.  And then Harry had thrust the Basilisk fang deep into the heart of the diary and Tom was gone.  Harry was alone.  But no, not alone, she watched as her younger self woke up and looked into the eyes of the boy who’d risked his life to save her. And then she had woken up and her head was throbbing, searing fit to burst.  She could have sworn that someone was holding a red-hot poker to her forehead.

Ginny wondered as she stared at the still blank lines of her journal, if what she had seen had actually happened or if it was just her imagination running away from her.  She remembered Harry telling his account of the Chamber when he’d brought her and Ron and Lockhart up to McGonagall’s office, but his being pierced by the Basilisk fang, and Fawkes’s healing him, that much had been new, as had been the it about him holding her in his arms.

He held you in his arms! Her heart sang.  He risked his life for you! 

She tried to reason with herself, to tell herself that he would have done the same for anyone.  But the fact remained, he had risked his life to save hers, and while he would have done the same for any of his friends it had been herself, Ginevra Weasley, whom he had held in his arms on the cold chamber floor and somewhere in her deepest of hearts she knew that this indeed made all the difference.