Ginny Weasley and the Heir of Slytherin

It turned out that Harry wasn't expelled after all. In fact, through some miracle, Dumbledore had let him go without taking a single point from Gryffindor.

In the meantime, Ginny had fallen back into writing in the diary. She knew it was wrong and that she was only hurting herself as well as everyone else, but she just couldn't stop herself. She had vowed to herself more times than she could count that she would never write to Tom Riddle ever again, but she could never resist it for very long. He provided the very little joy left in her life -- and that wasn't really so much joy as it was slightly eased pain.

As long as the attacks continued, Ginny simply couldn't get by without Tom Riddle's kind words assuring her that she wasn't going through this all alone. But the attacks would only continue so long as she wrote to him. And thus she was trapped in a vicious cycle. She knew she must be a bad person for continuing to write to him, but Tom Riddle was the only friend she had in the scary, confusing life she now led. Writing to him was wrong -- so wrong its wrongness made her head spin -- but the alternative was to embrace absolute misery and loneliness.

What would become of her? Not too long ago, Ginny had dreamed excitedly about what her future might hold, but now she couldn't see beyond the mess she had fallen into. She didn't know if or perhaps when she would be expelled. What if someone died in the next attack? Would they send her straight to Azkaban? She was only eleven, but if someone died and she'd known writing in the diary could potentially cause deaths, wouldn't that make her a murderer? And surely anyone who committed murder would be sent to Azkaban. Her father had once visited the wizarding prison on Ministry business and said it was the most awful place he had ever been.

As horrible as she knew Azkaban must be, Ginny would rather go there than just be expelled if it meant she would have to move back to the Burrow forever -- and look at her parents' faces every day knowing that she had shamed them beyond belief. There was no way whatever torture existed within Azkaban could be worse than that. Ginny considered that she might even commit suicide if that happened. After all, what would she have to live for at that point? Tom Riddle told her there was nothing worse than death, but Ginny quite disagreed.

With most of the students understandably impatient to leave school for the Christmas holidays, it was the fear of that kind of shame which made Ginny decide to remain at Hogwarts with her brothers, Harry, and Hermione. Even with her parents not knowing what she'd done, there was just no way she could bring herself to face them. Maybe if none of this had happened, Ginny would have stayed at Hogwarts anyway for the fun of it, but now she couldn't even imagine herself being happy. Any recollection she had of feeling an emotion other than despair, guilt, fear, or loneliness felt like it was from a really, really long time ago.

Fleeta Fleece and Kimmy Seong were returning home, but Lorelei's father was apparently "too busy" to have her. This meant it fell to Ginny to "take care of" Lorelei while Kimmy was away. The day the rest of the students left, Ginny had to take back everything she had ever thought about Kimmy treating Lorelei too much like a baby. Lorelei truly acted like a baby, first refusing to let go of Kimmy when they hugged goodbye and then throwing a temper-tantrum quite inappropriate for someone who was eleven years old.

"Please, let me come with you!" she begged tearfully. "I'll be very quiet -- you won't even know I'm there -- I won't even talk -- I'll do anything!"

"Bye," said Kimmy, appearing oblivious to Lorelei's stare-generating outburst, as she waved and boarded the Hogwarts Express.

"NO!" Lorelei shouted desperately as Ginny held her back to prevent her from running onto the train. "Please, stay! Or let me go with you! I'll be very, very good! You won't even know I'm there! I won't even make a sound at all! Just let me come!"

As Ginny had anticipated, Lorelei was an inconsolable nightmare. She was driven to tears daily, perhaps hourly, by the most inane things and expected Ginny to take this nonsense seriously. Being quite depressed herself, Ginny just went through the motions of comforting her, leaving neither of them very happy. You had to wonder how on earth Lorelei's brain worked (or didn't work) and what had possessed Kimmy to put up with her.

* * *

Christmas.

It was Christmas Day, but Ginny didn't feel at all Christmasy -- in fact, it felt to her like it was just another day of the week. While the castle had been beautifully decorated, just as her home had always been, it all felt superficial this year. You only had so many Christmases in your life, so you couldn't afford to waste any of them. On Christmas you were supposed to feel happy and she was so, so far from happy. And then she thought about how this was her first Christmas at Hogwarts and felt worse.

On every previous Christmas she could remember, Ginny had leaped eagerly out of bed and run downstairs to open the meager number of presents her family could afford for her. This year she lay in bed, looking at the small pile of presents her parents had sent her and not feeling the slightest urge to see what they might be. They would be worthless things anyway, such as one of the infamous Weasley jumpers. Ginny thought sadly of how she might have reacted if she were told just three months ago that she would feel too depressed to get out of bed on Christmas morning. Back then, Ginny probably wouldn't have even thought it was possible to be that sad.

Eventually, she at least forced herself to sit up. Lorelei was thankfully still asleep, lying motionless in her bed wearing a frilly pink nightgown which horribly clashed with her odd green-tinted skin. Her peaceful slumber belied how annoying she could be when she was awake. In fact, she had an unfortunate tendency to wake Ginny up in the middle of the night because she had had a bad dream, which naturally needed to be described in great detail, and was now "scared".

Ginny brought her legs into her chest and hugged them, feeling so lonely. It was moments like this when she ended up writing to Tom Riddle. She just wanted to not feel so alone and he really, really loved her. No, he didn't love her at all! What was she thinking? She knew what he was doing to her. Or did she? No, she did! He was liar and a manipulator and she knew it! There was no other explanation for what was happening to her. But what if she had made a terrible mistake and was shunning a perfectly innocent friend? Everyone needed a friend now and then...

No! Ginny thought fiercely. No, I'm not going to give in!

She really wanted to take out the diary, just to hug it again, but wasn't even going to let herself do that much. She knew that she would end up writing in it if she did that, having fallen for that twice already. She left her bed and stood next to it, shivering a little. It would be so incredibly easy for her to reach under her mattress and pull out the diary. Lorelei was conveniently asleep and for extra privacy Ginny could write behind the curtains of her four-poster bed. There was no one there to stop her and no one would ever know. It would be so easy to do it.

She had to get out of there. She knew she couldn't resist Tom Riddle for very long now. She looked around the room, considering getting dressed quickly, but decided against it. It would be okay for her to remain in her nightdress if she didn't leave the Gryffindor common room. And she needed to get out of the diary's proximity as fast as possible! Her heart racing, she walked out onto the girls' staircase.

Atta girl, Ginny, she thought. You're doing the right thing and you know it. Nobody else may know what a good thing you just did by resisting using the diary that time, but they don't need to know. You don't need a reward for doing the right thing. Just act normally and eventually you won't be tempted to use the diary at all and then everything will be all right again. Shouldn't that be enough of an award for you?

Ginny continued down into the common room, feeling a little better, but not much. She had resisted writing to Tom Riddle that one time, but there were many other times she had given in. Would she be able to resist him for long this time? Well, she would just have to try, wouldn't she? If she took it one hour, one day, one week at a time, maybe she could manage to escape him. How long would she have to resist writing to Tom Riddle before she stopped feeling so guilty?

Ginny sat down in front of the common room fire, staring idly into it. It was still early enough in the morning that the sun was barely up. By the standards of the past few weeks, this was shaping up to be a fairly good day -- but it was still Christmas and Christmas was supposed to be so much better than this. As Ginny thought back on the previous Christmases of her life, tears began welling up in her eyes. You were supposed to be so much happier than this on Christmas...

"Hey, Gin," George's voice said suddenly.

Ginny didn't turn around. She was rather angry with Fred and George as they had begun teasing Harry about being the Heir of Slytherin. Hermione would fall in love with Draco Malfoy before Fred and George Weasley took something seriously!

"You know what today is?" Fred's voice asked. Ginny couldn't bring herself to say it was Christmas.

"The twenty-fifth of December," she answered dully. There was a long pause --

"You do know that means it's Christmas, right?" George asked her.

"Of course," she replied, "I'm just not in the mood for Christmas right now."

"Well, that's okay," Fred joked, "there'll be another one next year."

"Go away," said Ginny, still refusing to look at them. She put her tear-stained face in her hands.

Please, go away...

"I reckon Percy's right -- she isn't herself."

"But if she isn't herself, then who is she?"

"Let's find out."

Ginny heard their footsteps approaching her, but didn't look up -- maybe this was going to be a bad day after all.

"Leave her alone," Hermione's voice said suddenly. Ginny looked up to see Hermione enter the common room through the portrait hole. Before she could even think Finally someone understands, Hermione added "I'll talk to her."

"I don't want to talk," said Ginny miserably.

"C'mon, this won't take long," Hermione assured her. "Let's just go up to your dormitory so we'll have some privacy." Ginny followed her up the girls' staircase.

"How about your dormitory?" Ginny suggested. "There's a girl in mine who's asleep and I don't want to wake her."

"Okay," Hermione agreed and with that she led Ginny into the second-year girls' dormitory. It looked exactly like the one Ginny shared with Fleeta, Kimmy and Lorelei except that the personal belongings were different. Ginny didn't know anything about Hermione's dorm mates, but the room gave her the impression they were probably quite like Fleeta.

As she and Hermione sat down on two separate beds so they were facing each other, Ginny realized that this was the perfect opportunity to tell Hermione her secret. She had decided that she couldn't tell anyone after the last attack, but maybe that was still the only way out of this. Maybe Hermione would still help her. Maybe she would understand.

Go on, Ginny told herself, tell her. C'mon, Ginny, be brave. Hermione won't hate you, she'll understand. She can fix everything. C'mon, you can do this -- it's easy! You just have to tell her. You know it's the right thing to do. Go on, Ginny just say it -- right now! One, two, three, now!

Ginny said nothing.

"Ginny, I have to tell you something," said Hermione.

"What?" asked Ginny, hoping this would be over quickly so she could go back to hating her life.

"Well..." Hermione continued, "I don't really have to, I suppose, but I want to. I mean, well..." She took a deep breath. "Ginny, this may be the last day you have to worry about the Chamber of Secrets." Hermione was taken aback the instant she finished saying this, having clearly not expected that these words would make Ginny look scared and horrified.

"W-what do you mean?" asked Ginny.

"Well, it's a long story," said Hermione hastily, "but Harry, Ron, and I think we have it all worked out." Ginny's heart stopped. All worked out? Did they know it was her? She actually hoped that they did as Hermione didn't seem to be hating her and it would save Ginny the trouble of explaining her situation. And at the moment there was nothing Ginny wanted more in the world than an ally who knew what was happening to her, didn't hate her, and wouldn't make her attack more people.

"Why -- why are you telling me this?" she asked eventually.

"Well, you've just been so worried about the Chamber," Hermione explained. "I wanted to make you feel better." Ginny's heart sank -- they didn't know it was her after all.

"I see," she said. Ginny felt quite anxious now. What were Harry, Ron, and Hermione going to be doing? Would they find out it was her? Would they hate her?

"Are you getting dressed?" asked Hermione as she got up. "Breakfast should be soon."

"Oh... I guess," said Ginny, glancing down at herself. She had temporarily forgotten she was still wearing her nightgown.

"I'd better go now," said Hermione. "I have to wake Harry and Ron to tell them that the, um, uh, thing I have to tell them about is ready." And with that she picked up a pair of presents addressed to Harry and Ron and left the room rather quickly.

Ginny remained in Hermione's dormitory for awhile after that, thinking. When she did head back down to her own dormitory, she continued to wonder what Harry, Ron, and Hermione were up to. Was there any way they could find out it was Ginny? And more importantly, if they did, how would they take it?

Ginny stepped back into her dormitory to get dressed. Lorelei was now awake, sitting on her bed and staring at the wall as though she had been stunned. Ginny started to silently step backwards out of the room, hoping Lorelei wouldn't notice her, but at the last moment she turned to look at Ginny with wide eyes.

"Hi..." Ginny said awkwardly, putting on a phony smile. "Happy Christmas, Lorelei."

"Happy Christmas, uh... what's your name, again?" Lorelei told the wall behind Ginny in something barely above a whisper.

"You don't remember my name?" asked Ginny incredulously. "We've only shared a dormitory for nearly four months!"

"I'm sorry," said Lorelei quickly. "I'm r-really sorry! I'm just lousy with names, that's all. I like faces better than names. That's how I remember people. You're the ginger girl with the freckles."

"I'm honored," said Ginny before she could stop herself. Lorelei looked down at herself in shame.

"You don't like me," she mumbled to herself. "You think I'm weird."

Well, you are weird, thought Ginny.

"No, I like you," she said instead.

"You're j-just saying that to be nice," Lorelei replied. "And you're just being nice to me 'cause you think you have to, but you r-really don't like me at all -- just like my father." Lorelei seemed to think she'd said too much and quickly turned away from Ginny. Ginny didn't think she ought to press the issue, but there was one thing she was curious about...

"You talk a lot about your father," she said. "Do you have a mother?" Lorelei closed her eyes and shook her head.

"Well, why not?" asked Ginny. "What happened to her?" Lorelei dissolved into tears.

"I -- I c-can't t-t-tell you," she sobbed. Ginny sat down beside her and held her closely. Rather quickly after she started, Lorelei looked up.

"Okay, I'll tell you," she decided. "My mum was a nymph." Ginny stared as Lorelei's face turned bright red.

"And so what happened to her?" Ginny asked eventually, trying to sound as though this were a regular conversation. Lorelei shook her head.

"It's not like that," she said in practically a whisper as though ashamed to let this information be heard. "My father met a clan of naiads years ago and... well, you can figure out what happened. I don't even know my mother's n-name, or if she even had one. D-do you know if nymphs have names?"

Ginny shook her head and Lorelei continued to stare down at herself. Not that this was unusual -- Lorelei seemed too shy to make eye contact with anyone even under normal circumstances.

"I wasn't supposed to be born," Lorelei said finally.

"Don't say things like that!" said Ginny instantly.

"Well, I wasn't!" Lorelei insisted in a much more forceful voice than Ginny had ever heard her use. "I was an accident. And I'm a half-breed, so that means I'm only half a person."

"No, you're not!" Ginny told her.

"How?" asked Lorelei. "The maths seem pretty clear to me."

"It doesn't work that way!" Ginny told her. "If you can think and have feelings, you're a full person."

"Well, I don't feel like I'm a full person," said Lorelei. "I shouldn't be here. I don't belong anywhere. I don't think humans and naiads were meant to... to mix. You just end up being a mess. I'm something that wasn't meant to exist. Everything would be better if I'd never been born."

"Oh, no, it wouldn't!" Ginny said at once. Lorelei said nothing.

"You're -- you're not going to tell anyone about this, are you?" she said eventually. "My f-father told me never to tell anyone. He works at the Ministry and he thinks it would ruin him if -- if -- if..." Her voice trailed off.

"Have you told Kimmy about this?" asked Ginny. Lorelei was silent for a moment.

"No," she mumbled.

"Kimmy's been holding your hand all year and you won't tell her what you're so upset about!" Ginny repeated in a perhaps too forceful voice.

"I know," said Lorelei, sounding the tiniest bit exasperated. "But I'm just not ready for her to know."

"Why?" asked Ginny. "She's Muggle-born, so I don't see how she could be prejudiced."

"I'm just not ready," repeated Lorelei. "I've actually been thinking of telling you for awhile now. I know you don't really like me, but I also know you're a good person and you'll keep it a secret, won't you?"

"Yes," said Ginny, trying to sound sincere, "yes, I will." She meant it, but Ginny found it a bit hard to sound sincere when she was secretly attacking people.

And then Ginny realized something -- she was Lorelei. And Tom Riddle was Kimmy with Hermione as Ginny herself. Or was Tom Riddle Ginny and Hermione Kimmy?

* * *

At dinner that day, Dumbledore led everyone but Ginny in a few of his favorite carols. While they sang happily, she sat silently off in a corner, thinking about how many secrets were stored inside her brain. She had never thought of herself as a particularly secretive person, but there were so many secrets in there and that day alone had seen the addition of two; whatever Harry, Ron, and Hermione were up to and Lorelei's parentage. And before that there was Ginny secretly training herself to fly and Percy's secret girlfriend. And, of course, a certain secret diary. And then the worst secret of all...

Ginny should have been proud that she could keep a secret. After all, some girls couldn't resist blabbing everything and turning any secrets they heard into the latest gossip. Certainly Ginny should be happy she wasn't that kind of girl. But perhaps she went too far in the other direction. Perhaps that was how she had fallen into Tom Riddle's grasp in the first place.

She thought back to that dreadful flying accident she had had on her first day of secret broom practice and how she had let her parents think that she had just tripped. Ginny knew that had been the right choice -- she had known, even at the age of six, that if she told her parents the truth, they wouldn't have let her near a broomstick again until she was thirty. When she started training herself to fly, Ginny had actually intended to reveal the truth after she had become good enough to impress her brothers. But days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and months turned into years. At first she was thinking that she ought to be just a little bit better first, but eventually the quality of her flying became irrelevant. It simply became harder and harder for her to tell the secret the longer she kept it -- until at last it became impossible. And now she had kept that secret for almost half her life.

And the same thing was happening now with Tom Riddle's diary. While keeping flying prowess a secret was fairly harmless, her connection to the Chamber of Secrets was a serious and dangerous secret. She had to let it out before it too became impossible to tell.

Or had it already become impossible?