Rating: PG-13
Fandom:: Harry Potter
Pairings: Ginny / Tom
Timeline: Chamber of Secrets
Keywords: Angst
Summary: The battle has ended. Good has triumphed once more. The heroes have been lauded and finally go to their well deserved rest. But the damsel is still far from saved.
Disclaimer: All belongs to JKR, the bitch. *sigh*
Author's Note: With all that happened to Ginny in The Chamber of Secrets – what Tom did to her, how he used her – it always seemed ridiculous to me that once the diary was destroyed she was back to herself again with no real damage done.
How could I have been so stupid? Ginny wondered desperately for the millionth time.
She clutched her arms tighter around her legs, resting her chin on her knees. Staring at the drawn curtains around her bed, she tried to find some way of making sense of all that had happened that night. Again and again though she kept coming back to her own stupidity.
She could have gone home if she'd wanted to. Her parents would have been all too happy to take her and after all that had happened Dumbledore would have allowed it. But she had wanted to stay at school. For some reason she thought it would help somehow. At least here she could get away from everyone and be alone with her thoughts. None of her brothers could follow her up to her dormitory and if she drew the curtains around her bed none of the other girls would bother her. It wasn't as if she were friends with any of them anyway. Little Ginny Weasley didn't have any friends.
She'd never tried to make friends with any of the other girls because she hadn't felt she needed friends. She'd had her own private fairytale after all. For the first time in her life she'd had something all her own. Something special, just for her.
Her mother had told her fairytales sometimes when she was little. On those all too rare occasions when she'd had time to devote just to Ginny. The boys wouldn't sit still for them, they'd scoff and make fun. And Ginny would always laugh and snigger about them behind her mother's back too, because she couldn't have her brothers thinking she was just some stupid girl who actually liked that kind of thing. But sometimes, when they weren't around she'd ask her mother to tell her those stories and her mother would weave some of the most wonderful tales.
She'd tell Ginny all about Princes and Princesses and Happily Ever Afters. She'd tell her about how she'd met Ginny's father at a friend's wedding and how he'd kissed her hand after the first time they'd danced. And that was the best story of them all because it was real. It couldn't be dismissed by the little part of Ginny that knew fairytales were make-believe.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought.
In the privacy of her own mind she'd told herself stories about how she'd meet someone just like her mother had. Only he wouldn't want a whole houseful of children and Ginny wouldn't spend her life changing nappies and cleaning up after everyone else. He'd be a tidy kind of person. And he'd only want Ginny, because she'd understand him.
A scream of pain and frustration welled up inside her and she pressed her mouth into her knees to keep it form coming out. Only a tiny squeak immerged, too quiet to be heard by her sleeping roommates. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her whole body shaking with the suppression of her emotions.
How could I have been such a... a... a silly little girl?
She'd wanted a fairytale and so that was what Tom had given her. He'd listened to all her frivolous little dreams and complaints. He'd told her stories of what it really was to be a wizard, of the power they each had somewhere deep inside. Not the silly wand waving they learned in class. That was merely the socially acceptable form, a form that could be monitored and controlled. Because what the Ministry really feared was that witches and wizards would learn what they really were, gods in their own right. If that happened they wouldn't need the Ministry any more. And all the petty tyrants would come toppling down.
It had all seemed so obvious when he was talking. Sitting in her bed now she could almost see his wispy shape – the best he could do at that point – sitting at the foot of her bed, telling her how he'd been laughed at, sneered at by his fellow students. No one had understood what he was saying.
But you understand, don't you Ginny? he'd whisper to her, looking at her with those intense dark eyes.
Ginny squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the phantom memory but completely unable to keep the bile from rising in her throat.
How could I have been so stupid?
She took another deep breath, pressing the heals of her hands into her eyes.
She'd wanted to believe. The way he'd look at her made something inside of her shiver and her breath come short. He'd talk about their future together, how they'd never be apart, how the two of them would explore the mysteries of their power together and find the answers... find a way to be what they'd always been meant to be. There would be nothing small or commonplace about them. They'd be pioneers discovering what magic truly was. They'd...
Ginny struggled up out of her bed as quietly as she could, suddenly desperate to get out of the room, but loath to face the curious stares of her roommates. Her bare feet made no noise on the cold stone of the floor. She didn't stop for her dressing gown though the chill of the castle cut sharply through the old cotton of her oft-mended nightdress. A hand-me-down that had belonged to her mother when she was a girl. Though it had been altered for Ginny who was so much smaller than she had been, it still hung loosely on her. Like everything else she owned, it looked like the second hand cast-off it was.
Tom had told her she was worth more than that. That people had a hard time seeing past the clothes to the person beneath. But for those who looked, really looked, Ginny blazed with power. He'd called her his shining star.
Stop it!
She closed and locked the door of the loo behind her. Her hands shook as she turned on the sink and splashed cold water on her face.
Against her will she looked up into the mirror.
He'd told her that a person's eyes were the gateway to their soul, for those who knew how to look.
With his voice in her head the eyes in the mirror had seemed to become dark pools, full of the mysteries of Ginny's hidden potential. Her face had reflected the glow of his admiration – his shining star, his beautiful goddess. A fragile mystery, just teetering on the edge of becoming so much more. A flower just about to open.
But as she looked now that image began to fade... the fairytale Tom had built around her faltered and slowly slipped away leaving...
Leaving the pale, skinny little girl she'd always been. A twelve-year-old with too many freckles, lank hair, and flat brown eyes. Just a common, mundane little girl. Nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. She wasn't pretty, she wasn't ugly. She was so commonplace as to be utterly invisible to most people. She always had been. Ginny Weasley had always been easy to overlook, to forget.
For a short time she'd seen herself as a mysterious shadow, looking out at a world that didn't see her because she was too much for people like them to take in. But the illusions Tom had wrapped around her were gone now, leaving behind the faded little wall-flower she'd always been.
Ginny had never really minded being forgettable, being little more than a cypher for the stories of others. The little friend at the best of times, useful only as backup in someone else's fairytale – one of the many children produced by one happily ever after, the captive audience for the adventures of her heroic older brothers. She'd grown up taking for granted that that was her place. She'd longed for a story of her own, but hadn't really believed it would ever happen.
And it hadn't. Tom had been... what? A mistake?
"He told me he loved me," she whispered to her plain little reflection in the mirror and would have laughed if her chest hadn't felt so tight. It was the one thing she'd been trying not to think. Ever since she'd woken up on the floor of the chamber, so cold she'd been beyond shivering. He'd told her he loved her, talked to her of their future. He'd kissed her and looked into her eyes as if she were the only person in all the world.
Now, in the middle of the night, staring at her reflection in the old mirror in the girl's loo she could see how absolutely ridiculous it really was. She'd believed in the fairytale because she'd wanted it so badly. And at the same time she ignored the obvious – the plain, silly girl she really was.
Ginny forced herself to stare fixedly at her reflection, noting each and every little flaw. The plain face, drab eyes, the dull, rust coloured hair... And she'd really thought that this could be anyone's "shining star"? That this silly little twelve-year-old could be anyone's dream come true?
She's been writing to me for months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes.
She could have kept on believing, recast herself into a tragedy instead of a romance if only she hadn't heard. She'd lay there on the floor drifting in and out of consciousness not really understanding what she was hearing. Not wanting to understand.
Imagine my disappointment when I learned Ginny had stolen the diary back from you.
She'd been dreaming, dreaming of sitting by the fire in the Gryffindor common room late at night, while Tom held her hand and told her of all the wonderful things they would do when he was free of the diary forever. But the voices kept intruding, blowing the dream away and pulling her back to someplace cold.
In a few minutes, Ginny Weasley will be dead. And I will cease to be a memory.
Her body had felt like it belonged to someone else, just dead weight she couldn't possibly control. And she hadn't really wanted to. She'd wanted to go back to her dream. She could hear Tom's voice, but there was something wrong with it. It was cold, angry. Not like Tom at all. And the things he was saying...
Funny, isn't it? The damage a silly little book can do? Especially in the hands of a silly little girl...
"A silly little girl," she said softly to her reflection in silent bathroom only a few short hours and a lifetime later.
Her hands were steady again as she padded her face dry with a towel and unlocked the door. She re-entered her dormitory with no more sound than she'd left it. But instead of getting back into her bed she carefully opened her chest. Hidden underneath all the shabby second-hand clothes and books was a small wooden box. A hand-me-down like everything else she owned, of course. But only this one single thing was actually worth anything.
Ginny clutched it to her chest and made her way softly down the stairs, careful to peek into the common room first to make sure there was no one there. It was empty as she'd expected at this time of the night, for which she was deeply grateful.
She held her breath for a moment as she sat down before the fire, fighting to suppress the sudden urge to cry. This was where she'd dreamed of sitting with Tom, just before her pretty little fairytale had come crashing down around her ears.
When she was sure she had herself under control she turned her attention to the box.
It had belonged to her grandmother, her mother's mother, who had died when Ginny was only a baby. Her mother had given it to her for her eleventh birthday to take with her to school.
"To keep all you little treasures in," she'd said. It was the only hand-me-down Ginny had ever truly loved – an heirloom as opposed to a cast-off. She had suspected her mother gave it to her out of guilt that Ginny alone among her siblings had been sent off to school without a pet, even a hand-me-down one like Ron had. At the time it hadn't really mattered much to Ginny. After all, by then she'd had a secret. She'd a diary and story all her own. Now, nine months later, it was the only thing of any value she had left.
The charm on the box to ensure that no one but its owner could open it tingled gently against her fingers as she lifted the lid.
She couldn't stop the tears from welling in her eyes as she looked down at the sad bits of paper she had so carefully folded and placed inside. But she wiped them away before they could fall. She couldn't cry now. If she started crying now she might never stop, ever again.
Gingerly she lifted out the first of the folded pages. She didn't have to unfold it but Ginny knew that she had to face and accept the loss of... well, everything really. All her dreams and plans... the loss of Tom. More than that though, she had to accept that the boy she'd loved never really existed.
The sketch wasn't all that well done. Ginny had never been a terribly good artist and so had carefully hidden everything she'd ever drawn. She felt the need to try and put down on paper the world as she saw it, though she'd have died before she admitted it to anyone. Well, anyone except...
She shut her eyes and drew in a deep breath. She'd never told anyone before him.
...all her pitiful worries and woes...
She opened her eyes again and looked down at the drawling of Tom, sitting cross-legged with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in his hands.
He'd told her he liked her sketches, that she didn't just look at the world but actually saw it and that that made her art mean something.
Was that just another lie? Had everything he'd ever said to her been a lie?
"Silly little girl," she said to herself again and carefully placed the drawing in the fire. Ginny forced herself to watch as the paper curled in on itself and the image it had taken her hours to complete to her satisfaction was obliterated in seconds.
Slowly she worked her way through the other sketches. Tom standing, looking off into the distance – into the future, she'd thought at the time. There were half-finished attempts at detailing his profile, his hands, the look in his eyes as he gazed intently at her. One by one, she placed them in the fire remembering what she'd felt as she'd drawn them and what she'd felt lying unable to move in the chamber, hearing her fairytale turn to ash. Her story had no need of illustrations any more, because it didn't exist.
Ginny was back again to the place she'd thought she'd escaped from, just another minor character in someone else's tale. Harry's this time, as it turned out. The ubiquitous damsel in distress the hero had to save. But Ginny wasn't a princess saved for her own sake. Harry would have done as much for anyone in her position, she knew that. She was just a child who'd fallen for the lies of the villain. A silly little girl, just like Tom said.
Only was Tom really a villain? She still had a hard time trying to believe that. Was it really so bad to want out of that diary? He'd been trapped, without a body, without a future... That was what Harry hadn't understood. The horror of being trapped in there while the world went on around him. As much as she wanted to Ginny couldn't hate him for wanting to be free. She couldn't really hate him for all the lies either. He's done what he had to do. And she'd made it so easy hadn't she? She'd been so eager to believe anything he said, just as long as he pretended to care. She was just tired of being alone, living on the outside of everyone else's stories. As long as he pretended to love her she had been willing to believe anything he told her.
Underneath the drawings of Tom were others, her favourites from before. There was one of Harry and several of the twins, a few of their garden at the Burrow and even one attempt at a self-portrait that Tom had said captured her mystery well. That one she tore into pieces before tossing it into the fire after all the others. She was sure the Harry's story and the twin's story all should have proper illustrations. But they wouldn't be by her.
Only when the box was empty and all her pathetic attempts at art were gone did she allow the first of the tears to fall. But only a few. She still hurt far too much inside to cry properly. She felt as though she'd break apart if it all tried to come out at once.
Her mother's story had been a romance, Tom's a tragedy... or possibly warning, Harry's was an adventure in which her brother Ron played a major role. The twin's story was most likely a comedy with clever and witty lead roles. And who knew what Percy's was really. A spy novel maybe, he was secretive enough for that.
And Ginny... Ginny was a bystander, just as she'd always known she was. Someone to observe and laugh at the right moments or cry or be in trouble when the hero needed to prove his worth.
She closed her little box and decided to give it back to her mother when she got home. It wasn't as if she had any treasures to keep in it any more. She'd make up some story about a few things disappearing from the dormitories and say that she was worried it might be taken at school. Her mother would believe that and probably say that Ginny was being very responsible about it. She'd be proud of her for a moment or two before one of her brothers did something and Ginny was forgotten in the chaos as usual.
With the box hidden once more at the bottom of her chest, Ginny crawled back into bed and pulled all the hangings closed around her again.
She lay back and thought about Tom and Harry and her drawings and most of all about the drab little reflection in the mirror.
"Silly little girl," she whispered to herself in the darkness.
It said all there was to be said.
