First Year

"Strange, my dear, very strange..."

"Another Weasley, I see...but a difficult one. Much like your older brother Percival, but ever more so - difficult."

The murmurs grow.

The small girl sits at the head of the room, fingers clutching the edges of her chair. Waiting.

"Innocent, yet as ambitious as they come...Intelligent, of course, but there have been others with your potential...”

"You want power, do you not, Miss Weasley?"

At eleven, she does not yet grasp what power is.

She sees bewilderment in her brothers' countenances, the growing doubt. She wishes suddenly, violently, that the Hat would simply decide - she does not know what the Hat is talking about, she does not want to guess at the implications; her eleven-year-old mind lacks a sufficiency of clarity to begin or want to comprehend.

"But you have such a peculiar weakness, my dear...well, we know what they will do about that, since it has always been their failing...I'll say, Miss Ginevra Weasley, that you should go to SLYTHERIN!"

A beat.

Vaguely, her ears register weak applause, eloquent in its shock.

"Miss Weasley." She hears a voice, and some distant part of her mind recognizes it as McGonagall’s.

Dumbly, numbly, she looks up. It is as if a vision of the professor’s face is swimming in front of her.

SLYTHERIN.

But you have such a peculiar weakness.

You want power; do you not, Miss Weasley?

"Join your table, please, Miss Weasley." There is a tremor in McGonagall’s voice, and an unmistakable mixture of shock and disappointment and pity in her eyes.

"Your table, Miss Weasley."

She feels herself sliding off the chair, still staring blindly at McGonagall.

"To the right, Miss Weasley."

A hundred pairs of eyes follow her as she stumbles towards the table.

A sneer greets her; white-blonde hair framing a sharp, malevolently elfin face. Malfoy, she dimly recognizes.

We know what they will do about that, since it has always been their failing...

"I see we've waited long enough for a Weasley with some substance."

~

It is cold and empty in her dormitory.

“Harper, Nicholas!”

“SLYTHERIN!”

“Vaisey, Brone!”

“SLYTHERIN!”

"White, Seldon!"

"SLYTHERIN!"

"Wyck-Devereaux, Lane!"

"SLYTHERIN!"

"York, Byrne-Declan!"

"SLYTHERIN!"

The rest of the Slytherins in her year are boys.

She thinks of the sneering words of her Head of House, Professor Snape, "I am here for you to speak to, Miss Weasley, despite what you may have heard."

"There is quite a small number of you this year; I am quite sure there is enough of me to go around.”

Each word had been empathic. Her skin crawls.

We know what they will do about that, since it has always been their failing...

Ginny’s vision is saturated by the dark green and silver of her surroundings: the silk sheets, gilded furniture, velvet-lined walls...

Why, Ginevra, surely you wouldn't be disappointed if you were placed in Slytherin?

She had replied no, her script large and round and childish.

I will be Sorted into Gryffindor, she had elaborated. My entire family's been in Gryffindor, Tom, for hundreds of years - it would be unthinkable to be in Slytherin. Especially from what Ron and Fred and George say -

And Harry Potter is in Gryffindor.

She closes her eyes and feels the tears burning against her lids.

"Weasley. Ginevra Molly Weasley. Rather a plain and unimaginative name, don’t you think?"

The sibilant voice comes from behind her, from the bed. Ginny's eyes fly open, chasing away the tears, and she spins around to find Malfoy lounging on the dark green of her bed, watching her with the sort of expression that she imagines he directs at Harry.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, voice sharp.

Malfoy smiles; it is a wide, feline smile which does not reach his silver eyes.

"Welcoming you, of course, sweet Ginevra."

"How do you - "

"I have my ways." The smile is gone now; an expression, hard and setting his smooth youthfulness into something else altogether, replaces it. He starts again, abruptly, "There is something wrong with you, isn't there, Ginevra." The smile returns. "There has to be something wrong with you. There has to be. A girl from a family of blood-traitors never should get Sorted into Slytherin." He pauses, eyes intent on hers, lips collapsing and curving into a smirk. "There is something wrong with you," he repeats, "And I will find out what it is that is wrong with you, Ginevra."

Ginny stands frozen, as she watches the boy, not much taller than her, not much older than her, rise up and walk towards her.

"There is something wrong with you, and I will know what it is soon enough." He is directly in front of her now, and the silver eyes hold some kind of excited, menacing glee in them. Then the lids shutter as he blinks, and he turns away, stepping back.

“I'll be watching you, Ginevra Weasley."

He is nothing; he is only a twelve-year-old boy, a brat, and a Death-Eater's son. A coward.

But she does not move.

She watches, speechless, as he saunters out of her dormitory. He holds his head in an impossibly arrogant manner and his blond hair is almost as white as his skin, the dim lights bleeding into his pallor.

And then the door closes, and finally the tears fall.

"There is something wrong with you."

~

She watches the way he and the black-haired second year boy reach for each other's ties with long fingers, tapered and white-tipped. Each boy expertly wind the green and silver material around the slim neck of the other's; in identical, crisp actions, both finish the knots, fastening and adjusting the other's, their arms interlinked.

"Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zabini," a boy's voice provides, abruptly. Ginny turns around quickly, only to face Lane Wyck-Devereaux, her fellow Slytherin first-year, at the threshold of the stairwell that leads to the Slytherin Common Room. It is still early; other than Ginny, Wyck-Devereaux and the two boys below, there is no one. Wyck-Devereaux is the same height as Ginny, and his sharp pale violet eyes are striking, as is his light gold hair, which reminds Ginny of angel's dust. In the next moment she blushes, embarrassed by the childishness of her thoughts. She draws herself taller.

"Lane Wyck-Devereaux." The boy extends a hand, tapered and long and perfect like Malfoy and Zabini's. Ginny is only too aware of the slight throb of jealousy, as she sees how her small fingers are far from as delicate as his. His touch is cold, and dry. Somehow she knows that he isn't any eleven-year-old, eleven-year-olds do not have such hands; they have hands which are just a bit too dirty, and sweaty, and young. But she remembers Malfoy from the night before, and remembers how twelve-year-olds do not speak the way he had spoken. "You are Ginevra Weasley, I presume."

His accent is clipped, but there is a lilting tone behind it that makes his diction sound almost musical. She nods, feeling somewhat afraid to speak.

"The others in our year are still in bed. Would you by any chance be on your way to the Hall, Ginevra?"

"Um, yes, I would. And - and you can call me Ginny. That's what my family and friends call me, anyway." Then she stops, uncertain; perhaps the boy does not want to make friends, perhaps this is all for politeness' sake.

A light smile graces the boy's face. In the pale fire from the Common Room he looks oddly beautiful, and with his formal manner Ginny cannot help thinking that he is much older than her. "And you can call me Lane, Ginny. Have you gotten your things ready? I hear our schedules will be given to us immediately afterward."

"Uh, yeah, my things are in my satchel. I'm - I’m carrying some of my books; my satchel's not nearly big enough."

The smile grows wider; Lane really is beautiful, she thinks, feeling immensely inadequate. "Would you like some help with them, Ginny?"

"No, it's alright, really," she quickly replies, blushing, flustered. Lane continues smiling, and, swinging his slim leather book bag he motions for her to walk with him. Gratefully, Ginny falls into step next to him.

But as they pass Malfoy and Zabini, Ginny sees out of the corner of her eye the sudden feral sneer on Malfoy's face as he watches her. The pale of his skin and the abnormality of his silver eyes seem all the more apparent. Then, in a beat, the sneer diminishes, and his expression almost mirrors Zabini's detached one from next to him.

I’ll be watching you, Ginevra Weasley.

~

She no longer remembers the specific days and weeks that pass after that first night and morning. She can only remember snatches of feelings, ghosts of younger selves.

She remembers her fear of Malfoy - a prickling, undeniable fear. She remembers the disapproval she was inflicted with both from within and without of Slytherin House for being the wrongly-Sorted Weasley. She remembers the distant sense that it was the beginning of a kind of divorce from her family: she remembers times when she looked to Ron or the twins or Percy and felt as if they could not see her at all, or would not. They treated her, when she came to them, like a delicate object, caring about any form of maltreatment they thought she suffered to extravagance, asking too many questions, looking at her with eyes that were too concerned.

She remembers Lane’s company; Lane was beautiful, although he never spoke much, and Ginny, even then, had an acute weakness for beautiful things. She remembers that she liked to think that he enjoyed her company equally, when he leant against her shoulder during yet another of Marcus Flint’s tirades during dinner, or when he whispered, something improbably clever for an eleven-year-old, into her ear during classes.

She remembers Tom.

She wants to believe even now, on most days, that she had not known what he was; when she is more honest she cannot say that she had never suspected. Nevertheless she remembers loving him; even now she looks at herself, naked, in the mirror, utterly aware that this is the body that Tom had looked upon, even if it has changed with the passing of time.

Once you come to the point of knowing and understanding there is no going back to the point where you were too young and too ignorant.

~

Every night he comes, and promises her the same thing.

"I will find out what it is that is wrong with you, Ginevra."

Sometimes he appears in an all-black ensemble very much like what he had worn from the first time she remembers seeing him, in Flourish & Blotts.

Sometimes he appears in his Quidditch robes, in its resplendent green and silver, as October comes. Somehow he looks more human in his Quidditch uniform: less poised, less immaculate, and quite ironically, more grounded. Even Ginny can see the light circles around his silver eyes on these days, and sometimes she can even think him beautiful, in a somewhat harsh, incomplete way - perhaps because of this small evidence of weakness, of imperfection.

She knows, of course, of the rivalry between him and Harry, and who usually has the upper hand. Despite her emotional attachment to the Boy Who Lived and the natural blood alliance with her own family and Gryffindor, her being in Slytherin and being allowed to be friends with hardly anyone else but Lane and Tom affords her to wonder why Malfoy is jealous of Harry. In terms of intellect he is by far superior (Ginny has seen some of his graded parchments in the Common Room); from her deductions, Harry often has to depend on Hermione for help in assignments, along with Ron. In terms of wealth, although she remembers Ron telling her family that Harry "has loads of money - his parents left him a ton in Gringotts, I reckon", she is certain Malfoy has a good deal more. Even in terms of physical attributes Malfoy can easily sway the vote in contrast to Harry - when not smirking or sneering in his feral manner, his defined features are more becoming than Harry's best feature - his large brilliant green eyes - can ever hope to be.

But all these observations should also make her understand why Malfoy is jealous of Harry, says Tom’s elegant script. After all, Malfoy has all these advantages, but Harry has always been better known, more kindly looked upon. Ginny finds that this makes sense; she only needs to look at recent events in Hogwarts to come to the same conclusion. Even with the talk of Harry being the Heir of Slytherin going about, students still look to him, confident that, far from being the Heir of Slytherin, Harry is to be their saviour from the recent spree of Petrifications. That he speaks Parseltongue is just an added advantage - after all, hold your enemies closer, or "zhi ji zhi bi, bai zhan bu dai, as Sunzi's Art of War says". She hears this from a pretty Chinese Ravenclaw, Cho Chang, as she and Lane pass the Ravenclaw Quidditch Team who are on their way to Quidditch practice one day. Later Lane translates what Cho had said: know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never lose any battle you wage.

That night, Tom writes that he is impressed by Lane’s fluency in Mandarin, and knowledge of the Art of War.

Malfoy had been a suitable candidate for the esteemed role of playing the Heir of Slytherin in Hogwarts' little drama, but he had been forgotten, no thanks to Harry's rather accidental display of his being a Parselmouth.

Whatever Harry does which wins himself attention will likely always irk Malfoy, because Harry always does whatever he does accidentally, concludes Tom. When he defeated You-Know-Who, he had done so accidentally. When he was discovered to be a natural at Quidditch, he had been doing so accidentally. When he showed the world his gift of being a Parselmouth, he had also done so accidentally. Malfoy, having been groomed into what he is all his life, who likely plans everything he does, cannot in the same token comprehend how Harry can possibly be famous and everything he wants to be, in many ways, accidentally.

And so Malfoy has taken up Quidditch, in the one thing that he can still try to, very publicly, best Harry.

Ginny has seen both fly, in her strolls by the Quidditch Pitch to the Lake with Lane, or sometimes by herself, with Tom in her hand, in her mind. Again she sees, and records for Tom, the stark difference between the two.

Harry is pure instinct in the air. Ginny thinks that he revels in flying, as he pushes to higher altitudes, his scarlet and gold robes spreading in the wind beneath him. Not caring, not holding back. He seems completely unaware, and unafraid, of consequences.

Malfoy is controlled talent, adulterated and tempered with, taught and corrected and enhanced and implemented. He captures Ginny’s attention as well, only that, watching him, she always inexplicably finds herself holding her breath. When she reflects upon it as she records her days for Tom, she realizes that it is almost stifling to watch him.

But somehow, in their flying styles, as Ginny writes to Tom, it is as if she can see the both of them more clearly, and with Malfoy she feels something terribly close to pity.

And so, slowly, the fear of his visits seem to slowly ebb away, and Ginny falls into the pattern of seeing him every other night, taking his words almost as if they are her mother's goodnights. And then she falls asleep, with Tom's lulling voice in her ears.

Quidditch season begins.

She begins to see the worry in Malfoy's face, his pallor increasing each time he sees Harry. She notices the way he grips the handle of his broom, the way he eats less, the way he talks less. The way he sometimes lapses into unprecedented moments of silence in her own dorm, just as he has delivered his usual threat of finding out what is wrong with her. The way he somehow looks more like a boy, less like the son of a Death Eater, less like the Death Eater Ginny believes and tells Tom he will surely become.

When the day itself arrives for the first match of Gryffindor versus Slytherin, she sees the way he shakily ties Zabini's green and silver tie, and looks as if Zabini is hanging him as he returns the favour.

He loses the first game.

Ginny suspects that no one else notices his facial expression just as Harry catches the Snitch. She sees the blind rage at Harry, the world, the Snitch, but most of all, the rage at himself. She sees the resigned sagging of his shoulders, admitting to the inevitability of it all.

And so, in all the frenzy of the aftermath of the game, as he returns limping slightly from the infirmary, she waits up in the Common Room for him.

"Malfoy."

He looks up, and Ginny is almost afraid of the bare emptiness, the aftermath of his rage, which has clearly followed. But in the next moment the old arrogance seems to find some semblance of its position in his countenance, even though Ginny can see the obvious effort behind such.

"What? Ready to gloat, Ginevra Weasley?"

"My House team lost, Malfoy; I can't see why I would gloat about that,” she answers steadily.

Malfoy’s face responds with an unreadable expression, but it is only for an instant. He retorts, quickly, "I'm not one for pity, Ginevra. Save it for your darling Saint Potter, would you; after all, he is seriously injured, the poor, miserable Boy Who Lived."

She does not say anything. Instead she walks up to him, and, in a gesture even she cannot explain later and does not admit to Tom, she hugs him.

She registers the shock in his muscles, tensing immediately. But she then also feels the gratitude in their relaxation, just a quick second before he pushes her away.

"I don't need your pity, you filthy blood-traitor."

He stalks away, but Ginny realizes in the next moment that the fact is that, for the first time since her first night in Hogwarts, he has not ended his speech with an "I will find out what it is that is wrong with you, Ginevra."

Later, she walks back to her dorm to sleep. Her sleep is a deep, black sleep with vague dreams which are there but yet beyond the grasp of her waking consciousness, and the next morning it spreads like wildfire that Colin Creevey of Gryffindor has been Petrified.

She begins to doubt, to suspect, when on her hands and her shoddy robes she sees the flecked traces of blood. Frightened, she suddenly remembers a line in a Muggle play that Bill had once convinced the family into going to, at the nearest Muggle town - "Out, damned spot." Then she had laughed at Lady Macbeth's words, but now - she refuses to think, refuses to believe. As far as her family line has been in existence, they have always been Gryffindors.

And then a little voice reminds her, maliciously, that her family line has existed for a good few centuries and that a good few centuries is a long time, and who knows whose blood has come into the mix, and, anyway, she is in Slytherin.

And then there are the gaps of time of which she has no memory of.

"Ginny, it's almost time for dinner. Where have you been?" Lane will ask. She retreats, starting to become afraid. Finally Lane resorts to just staring at her, observing her, and all the more she begins to distance herself from him, even placing herself with Byrne-Declan York, Seldon White, Nicholas Harper and Brone Vaisey instead, trying to purge herself of the fear and a terrible, specific feeling of unease with the company of people she does not care for.

Even Malfoy scares her again, for she begins to fully believe his words, that there truly is something deeply wrong with her.

She slowly realizes that the Petrifications come after each of these gaps; the Petrifications come after each of these gaps after each time she speaks to dear, sweet Tom, her constant companion, her confidant, her guiding light.

She turns on him then, and tries to get rid of him. She cannot afford to keep him, she is afraid, she has to be the turncoat, if Tom has turned on her and used her first, she has to lose him, she cannot afford to lose so much, she cannot comprehend what Tom wants, she cannot overcome what she begins to realize, in a deep, blind horror, is his twisting, manipulative power.

And then one day she wakes from a gap in Malfoy's arms, along an empty corridor and facing a wall, tear streaks down her face.

"Quiet, Ginny, quiet." It is a vehement whisper, so vastly different from Malfoy's usual sneering voice.

She is frozen for a moment, then she turns tail, disentangling herself from Malfoy, from his strange softness, running.

Later she finds Tom's diary, her diary, in the inner pocket of her robes. She must have tried to retrieve it back from Harry, and in his anger he must have overpowered her again.

Tom. It is all Tom's doing. It is Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom. All Tom.

That night, another gap consumes her.

She pitches forward, and then all was black.

"There is no need to struggle, sweet Ginevra, gullible little Ginny. I have already won, just let me come out, let me, let me, let me..."

When she awakes, this time, it is in Tom's Chamber of Secrets, and Tom, his beautiful face hovering over hers, smiles. Black hair curling softly, framing his face, dark blue eyes wide and youthful, he smiles, and her heart turns to water.

"Sweet Ginevra. Looking for a constant? 'There is something wrong with you, Ginevra.' He would have been your only constant, the silly boy, wouldn't he have been, Ginevra?"

And then Tom breathes, a soft, triumphant breath, and struggling she falls again.

The next time she awakes is to Harry, who swiftly destroys Tom.

Sweet Ginevra.

Later, when she has been tucked into bed in the infirmary, she hears her father's explosive rant concerning Lucius Malfoy's involvement in the entire affair, and her heart freezes with the thought of how Draco Malfoy must have known all along.

But unknown to the others, Draco Malfoy turns up, somehow, at her bedside. No one else other than her parents, not even Lane, has been allowed to see her. She imagines that he is paler than ever before. Suddenly she wonders, beyond her fear of him, how he had come to be holding her that night, along the corridor. He ought to have been in the Slytherin Common Room, with Blaise Zabini and Lane and Marcus Flint and all the other Slytherins.

"Don't come near me." She hears her own voice, and is shocked by how weak and hoarse it is. The older boy does not seem to have noticed, however, and does not heed her words: instead he walks closer to her bed, settling himself on a visitor's chair. Speechless with fear, she watches him, unable to say anything more.

"I didn't know." They both know what he means. She stares him.

"Why have you come?"

"I will find out what it is that is wrong with you, Ginevra,” he replies, mechanically.

Somehow the words make her see. Somehow they make her believe his innocence - if his ignorance can be considered such.

And when he leaves, the same way he must have somehow managed to come, she somehow feels comforted.

A day later, when she emerges from the infirmary, Lane embraces her, not saying anything. It is enough.