Rating: PG
Fandom:: Harry Potter
Pairings: none
Timeline: Chamber of Secrets
Keywords: Humour, Character Study
Summary: "Ginny had always liked to think that she was special." A very different take on sweet, innocent Ginny Weasley.
Disclaimer: All belongs to JKR, the bitch. *sigh*
Author's Note: This is just a silly bit of playing around on my part based on two simple ideas: that Tom Riddle wasn't the great manipulator everyone thought he was and that Ginny Weasley wasn't ths sweet little innocent everyone thought she was. Please read in the spirit of light-hearted silliness in which it was written.
Ginny had always liked to think that she was special. That there was something in her somewhere that set her apart from other people - made her just a little bit different. All she had to do was find what that special thing was. The only problem was, there wasn't anything. She was the youngest of the Weasley's, the only girl... but she was still just one of seven. Being the youngest only met that whatever it was she wanted to do, one of her brothers had been there before her and had probably done it better anyway. And being the only girl didn't mean much at Hogwarts because there were hundreds of girls in that school. There was nothing to set Ginny apart from them. She was just another girl, just another Weasley, just another Gryffindor. Ginny was as common as they came and she knew it.
After all, didn't every little girl want to be special? Didn't every one of them dream that she had some hitherto unexpected talent or way of thinking that would forever set her apart from those around her? Her simple desire to be somehow different from the others only served to make her all the more like them.
Sometimes she could get caught up in the idea that maybe, just maybe...
Then she'd met Harry and been so exited. What a let down that turned out to be.
The thing was, Harry was special. Not just because of how his parents had died, not just because he'd survived. There was something about him that was special, different. Even Ginny could see it. Harry was magically talented, powerful in his own understated way. He was the youngest seeker in a century and was incredible on the Quidditch field. Harry had more special about him than Ginny could have ever dreamed of!
What drove Ginny crazy once she got to know him was that he didn't want it! Harry didn't want to be special. He didn't even really try to use it. He just fell into everything that happened to him, always simply at the right place at the right time. And he never once seemed to stop and marvel at it.
The only way in which Harry was just like everyone else in the world was that he ignored Ginny. He barely noticed her existence. But then, why should he? No one else did. Not even Tom when it came right down to it.
Ah yes, Tom. Her second "brush with greatness" a1s it were. Another let down.
Oh, Tom had noticed her. He'd had to. She had been the one writing in his diary after all, his only contact with the outside world. One would have thought that would have made her special to him or that he'd a least pay enough attention to what she was saying to figure out the first thing about her. He hadn't though. All he'd seen was just another little girl.
She was simply someone he could fool into doing what he wanted her to do. After all, Voldemorte was a cunning manipulator, as Dumbledore had told her parents. What kind of chance could a normal girl like Ginny have against him?
Oh yes, Tom was a very cunning manipulator... later in life maybe. Ginny could testify to the fact that he certainly wasn't that good at it at 15. His attempts to trick her had been pathetically transparent. However, Ginny wasn't stupid enough to actually tell anyone that. Because then she would have to explain what had really happened and she didn't exactly have a burning desire to be expelled, thank you very much. Hagrid's wasn't the kind of "special" she was trying for. So, she let them all continue to think that she'd been lied to and tricked by an "evil genius" as McGonagall had put it.
Evil genius? Hardly. It had been a frustrating year. Ginny had finally made it to school where she thought she'd finally find some way to stand out, only to find that she really was exactly like everyone else. She wasn't special in any way, shape, or form. The only unusual thing to do with her at all was that her diary talked back to her. And even that hadn't been as interesting as it should have been. The Basilic had been the only worthwhile part. She still missed it sometimes.
Ginny had known Tom was up to something from the first. But she waited, playing his game and hoping it was something a little less boring that most of her life. It had been exciting having a secret, even if it was only a possessed bit of a dead tree. And when she'd figured out what was going on, she'd been thrilled. Tom was the heir of Slytherin, he was trying to use her to let The Monster out. Ginny was the only person in the school who knew what was in the Chamber of Secrets!
And the basilic itself... Had Harry really needed to kill it? It had been so beautiful, so magical and so very, very unique. She'd adored it from the first time she'd seen it. And despite Tom's belief that it was his alone to command, the serpent had liked her as well. It had licked at her face with its forced tongue and closed its eyes, making little happy hissing sounds when she's scratched at the small, delicate scales on the back of it's neck. It was the best pet anyone could ever possibly have.
However, Tom could spoil anything and things had become tedious very quickly. She could have played along with Tom's "mind games" in her sleep (and sometimes actually had). He become frustrated almost immediately with the fact that it was taking so long for the basilic to actually kill someone. Ginny never had really know why he wanted that so badly. Where would killing someone got them? The school would have been closed and they'd have all been sent home. Oh yes, that would have been very exciting.
So, it had been up to Ginny to take matters into her own hands and insure that the school year was interesting, not over prematurely. It was a thin line to walk, especially with Tom complaining about the lack of carnage every step of the way. Of course, it had never occurred to him that Ginny might have something to do with it, that the basilic might have been listening to her instead of him. She was just Ginny after all, one girl like so many others - too silly to know what was going on.
Stupid git.
Then there was the spell. Tom was going to suck her life out of her in order to become alive again - to leave the diary behind and enter into the real world to continue his diabolical reign of terror! Had he thought that no one would notice a sudden new student or that a 15 year old with no certifications could just go off into the world and make it on his own with no problems? But then Tom never did plan very far in advance. Sometimes Ginny wondered if he was really was Voldemorte at all or if it was just another one of his pretensions. Because she could see no way that his juvenile kind of scheming could ever have brought the Wizarding world to a civil war. After all, if it hadn't been for Ginny his little reign of terror over the school would have been over before it began.
In the end though, it really didn't matter. Because Tom was still just a memory trapped in a book. It was Ginny who had to do the spell that set things in motion. Tom was sure he had her entirely under his power and that she's mindlessly preform a spell that would kill her simply because he told her to. He'd believed her to be entirely unaware of what was going on anyway. She was supposed to have been just following orders like a mindless Golem or something.
But like always, Tom's abilities were lacking and it was up to Ginny to make anything happen all on her own. She'd done the spell, but not as he'd intended. Instead of him soaking up her life, she had been soaking up his knowledge and memories. If Tom had bothered to read the fine print in the spellbook he would have known that it was the one doing the absorbing of power that was rendered unconscious in the early stages of the spell as their mind and body was flooded with new things, not the other way around.
What. An. Idiot.
And it had all been going so well until Harry interfered believing, like everyone else, that poor little naive Ginny was in the clutches of an "evil genius" and needed rescuing. She could have killed him. Oh, it wasn't that she didn't like Harry. He was certainly very likeable in his own rather dorky way. But she was so annoyed and jealous it practically made her sick to her stomach every time she saw him. And then he'd stubbled in and screwed up her one chance at becoming someone special herself.
She'd had to think fast when she woke up, playing the frightened little victim for all she was worth. He'd believed her entirely. Pathetic. Of course, everyone else had believed her too. But then, she was Ginny after all. Of course, she'd been duped. She couldn't possibly have gone alone with such a horrible plan. She was too nice a girl for that. Besides being a Weasley. And she'd been saved by Harry, which seemed to seal it all perfectly. Everything was exactly as it should be.
God, they were all so blind.
What Ginny would give for a moment of Harry's importance. People actually listened when Harry said something. Whether they believed him or not had nothing to do with it. Everyone always argued about whether important people were right or wrong. The point wasn't that he was sometimes made fun of. The point was he wasn't ignored. He was noticed. He was someone. And instead of taking that for that for the gift it was, he whined about it. He said he just wanted to be normal. What was so wonderful about being normal? It was boring. But even when he complained about it, saying he wanted things to be different, he was using what he had. Because he had people to talk to about it, he was sympathised with, paid attention to. In other words, people were listening.
What Ginny wouldn't give to be listened to, just once. She wouldn't mind being teased or laughed at because if someone was teasing her they had noticed her enough to bother teasing.
But no one would ever listen to little Ginny Weasley. Why would they?
And now that Tom was gone, with all that knowledge he hadn't known how to use. And her basilic was dead, the first pet she'd ever had... She was right back were she'd been before. She was just another little girl, one of hundreds, all exactly alike. All with dreams and freckles and the hope that there was something in them to make them even a little different than all other others.
She could just strangle Harry. She'd been so close. But oh well. Back to the drawing board as it were.
Ginny Weasley was not going to remain Normal forever. She'd find some way of standing out even if it killed her. There were other avenues to be explored. Quidditch maybe. Who knew, maybe she could shock them all with unexpected talent. It was a long shot, but anything was better than nothing. Or maybe when she graduated she'd change her name, dye her hair and become the next dark lord. Dark Lady? Whatever. The point was that if Tom was any indication of the caliber of "genius" it took to be a dark wizard, she could do it in her sleep better than he could.
It was a thought anyway.
Because being normal was just too boring for words.
