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edenfallingSummary: "Chamber of Secrets" from Ginny's point of view. In this chapter, Ginny and Xanthe arrange a study session, Snape oozes nastiness, we discover what Apple whispered to Daphne on the train, Ginny sleepwalks, and Tom does something slightly disturbing.
This chapter is where Ginny and Xanthe make an effort at solidifying their tentative friendship. It's awkward on both sides -- Xanthe talks too much and Ginny keeps too many secrets -- but they bond over their mutual dislike of Lockhart, among other things. And the awkwardness, as well as the pretext that it's really a business arrangement to help each other out in Herbology and Astronomy, probably keeps Ginny from telling Tom that she's made a friend, which is very fortunate in the long run.
This chapter also solidifies Ginny's enmity with Daphne, her social isolation from her housemates, and her bond with Tom. It's very much about interpersonal relationships and Ginny trying to find her feet in a new environment.
Hmm. I gave Sprout a speech about the virtues of Herbology, to sort of match the speech Snape gets to give in canon. Hers isn't nearly so melodramatic, but I wanted to point out that understanding magical plants is a very useful skill for a witch or wizard, and also ties in closely with Potions, the other non-wand-based discipline. It's a lot easier to design Potions if you know the properties of your ingredients, after all!
Sprout and Snape are the professors who turn up most frequently all through this story. Which suggests that I might do well to put a little scene with Snape into the first half of chapter 15, to tie up Ginny's animosity toward him the same way I tied up her much closer and friendlier relationship with Sprout. *makes note*
Ginny tells Tom he's her best friend. Danger, danger, danger! Admissions of trust lower your defenses against invasive mental/emotional magic! And indeed, immediately thereafter she has the following dreams:
Ginny didn't know that she'd classify her dreams as pleasant, but they were, at least, not unpleasant. She dreamed of a silk scarf winding around and around her neck and arms, the fabric whispering softly against her skin. She dreamed of a pillared chamber underground, filled with crackling magic. And she dreamed again of the princess in the ruined castle, looking for the dragon.
Recurring dreams were annoying, she decided the next morning. If only the princess would find the blasted dragon, maybe she'd be able to have done with the dream.
I don't know about you, but the silk scarf thing sounds vaguely ominous to me, especially in context. :-/
Then we move on to Ginny's first study session with Xanthe, by way of a note that Ginny continue to feel overwhelmed by Hogwarts -- as if she's missing something or falling behind somehow. That sense of pressure may be amplified by Tom, to keep her from thinking calmly and to make her feel more reliant on him. I'm not sure anymore quite what I was doing with that.
Xanthe talks a little bit about perceptions of Hufflepuff, which makes Ginny feel guilty. We also learn that Ginny is a pretty good tutor (in addition to being an obsessively over-prepared one), but Xanthe is not. This may be related to the subjects they're trying to teach -- I can say from experience that trying to explain a mathematical concept to someone who isn't grasping it is incredibly frustrating -- but is probably also a reflection of Ginny's step-by-step approach contrasted to Xanthe's more scattered "But why don't you see it, it's so simple!" tendency to skip intermediate steps.
I didn't know about Ginny teaching herself to fly in secret when I started writing, since that was before the publication of OotP, but I naturally assumed she'd be good. Take note of the way she instantly tries to rescue Colin Creevey even though she vehemently dislikes him, and also never thinks to protest when Madam Hooch delegates her to round up the class after Daphne's dangerous prank. She wants to protect people and will jump impulsively toward the first way to do so even if it's not objectively very sensible, and also accepts responsibility for things even when it might not be completely appropriate to do so.
Ginny seethes when the other Gryffindor first years collectively decide a horrible detention was enough punishment and end up admiring Daphne's nerve instead of ostracizing Apple. This further pushes her away from her housemates and toward Tom, who of course validates her frustration and sense of moral superiority.
Some time passes, Ginny catches a cold, and we start the running Percy-and-Ginny thread with him bundling her to the infirmary to take Pepperup potion and her seething over the way he only seems to pay attention when her (potential) illness might get him in trouble. That puts her in a bad mood going into a difficult Potions lesson (which, I admit, is probably WAY too complicated for a first year class, but I don't care; as I've said before the Potions and Herbology portions of this story are completely and utterly self-indulgent and you will excise them over my cold dead hands), but she and Electra have come to a functional in-class partnership even if they still dislike each other, so Ginny is in a much better mood by the end of the lesson... which Snape promptly punctures because he is a horrible, horrible teacher and plays favorites in an appallingly blatant way.
So when Susan pulls her aside to ask why she's so dead-set against Daphne, Ginny is primed to explode. And she does, basically creating a self-fulfilling prophecy -- she's worried her housemates will turn against her, assumes it's inevitable, insults them, and therefore ensures they do turn against her. *sigh* She realizes her mistake... and instead of trying to fix it, blames everything on other people and just lets the mess stew. *deeper sigh*
And then we reach the title scene! My take on Ginny's possession was that it happened gradually. Long before Tom had enough influence to make her blank out completely, he was able to manipulate her while she was asleep. Which is the source of Ginny's recurring dream about a princess searching through a castle for a dragon -- she is wandering through Hogwarts looking for the basilisk, because Tom's control isn't yet strong enough to make her go directly where he wants. She wakes near Myrtle's bathroom, narrowly escapes from Filch, and understandably panics.
Tom then explains everything away with psychology: she's stressed, she's in a strange place away from her parents (though he couches this as "away from her family," which is interesting since her brothers are technically also at Hogwarts! they just feel like they're "away" since they're busy with their own classes and friends), she feels betrayed by the mess with Daphne, etc. And Ginny buys it. She reiterates that Tom is her best friend, thus locking in his influence over the rest of her year, both through magic and through more mundane emotional manipulation.
And we close with Tom wasting some gathered power to be ominous for the reader's benefit. I'd get rid of that if I were writing this from scratch, since it takes several more chapters before he can do anything else outside the diary, but oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty. *wry*
Bechdel Test = PASS
This chapter is where Ginny and Xanthe make an effort at solidifying their tentative friendship. It's awkward on both sides -- Xanthe talks too much and Ginny keeps too many secrets -- but they bond over their mutual dislike of Lockhart, among other things. And the awkwardness, as well as the pretext that it's really a business arrangement to help each other out in Herbology and Astronomy, probably keeps Ginny from telling Tom that she's made a friend, which is very fortunate in the long run.
This chapter also solidifies Ginny's enmity with Daphne, her social isolation from her housemates, and her bond with Tom. It's very much about interpersonal relationships and Ginny trying to find her feet in a new environment.
Hmm. I gave Sprout a speech about the virtues of Herbology, to sort of match the speech Snape gets to give in canon. Hers isn't nearly so melodramatic, but I wanted to point out that understanding magical plants is a very useful skill for a witch or wizard, and also ties in closely with Potions, the other non-wand-based discipline. It's a lot easier to design Potions if you know the properties of your ingredients, after all!
Sprout and Snape are the professors who turn up most frequently all through this story. Which suggests that I might do well to put a little scene with Snape into the first half of chapter 15, to tie up Ginny's animosity toward him the same way I tied up her much closer and friendlier relationship with Sprout. *makes note*
Ginny tells Tom he's her best friend. Danger, danger, danger! Admissions of trust lower your defenses against invasive mental/emotional magic! And indeed, immediately thereafter she has the following dreams:
Ginny didn't know that she'd classify her dreams as pleasant, but they were, at least, not unpleasant. She dreamed of a silk scarf winding around and around her neck and arms, the fabric whispering softly against her skin. She dreamed of a pillared chamber underground, filled with crackling magic. And she dreamed again of the princess in the ruined castle, looking for the dragon.
Recurring dreams were annoying, she decided the next morning. If only the princess would find the blasted dragon, maybe she'd be able to have done with the dream.
I don't know about you, but the silk scarf thing sounds vaguely ominous to me, especially in context. :-/
Then we move on to Ginny's first study session with Xanthe, by way of a note that Ginny continue to feel overwhelmed by Hogwarts -- as if she's missing something or falling behind somehow. That sense of pressure may be amplified by Tom, to keep her from thinking calmly and to make her feel more reliant on him. I'm not sure anymore quite what I was doing with that.
Xanthe talks a little bit about perceptions of Hufflepuff, which makes Ginny feel guilty. We also learn that Ginny is a pretty good tutor (in addition to being an obsessively over-prepared one), but Xanthe is not. This may be related to the subjects they're trying to teach -- I can say from experience that trying to explain a mathematical concept to someone who isn't grasping it is incredibly frustrating -- but is probably also a reflection of Ginny's step-by-step approach contrasted to Xanthe's more scattered "But why don't you see it, it's so simple!" tendency to skip intermediate steps.
I didn't know about Ginny teaching herself to fly in secret when I started writing, since that was before the publication of OotP, but I naturally assumed she'd be good. Take note of the way she instantly tries to rescue Colin Creevey even though she vehemently dislikes him, and also never thinks to protest when Madam Hooch delegates her to round up the class after Daphne's dangerous prank. She wants to protect people and will jump impulsively toward the first way to do so even if it's not objectively very sensible, and also accepts responsibility for things even when it might not be completely appropriate to do so.
Ginny seethes when the other Gryffindor first years collectively decide a horrible detention was enough punishment and end up admiring Daphne's nerve instead of ostracizing Apple. This further pushes her away from her housemates and toward Tom, who of course validates her frustration and sense of moral superiority.
Some time passes, Ginny catches a cold, and we start the running Percy-and-Ginny thread with him bundling her to the infirmary to take Pepperup potion and her seething over the way he only seems to pay attention when her (potential) illness might get him in trouble. That puts her in a bad mood going into a difficult Potions lesson (which, I admit, is probably WAY too complicated for a first year class, but I don't care; as I've said before the Potions and Herbology portions of this story are completely and utterly self-indulgent and you will excise them over my cold dead hands), but she and Electra have come to a functional in-class partnership even if they still dislike each other, so Ginny is in a much better mood by the end of the lesson... which Snape promptly punctures because he is a horrible, horrible teacher and plays favorites in an appallingly blatant way.
So when Susan pulls her aside to ask why she's so dead-set against Daphne, Ginny is primed to explode. And she does, basically creating a self-fulfilling prophecy -- she's worried her housemates will turn against her, assumes it's inevitable, insults them, and therefore ensures they do turn against her. *sigh* She realizes her mistake... and instead of trying to fix it, blames everything on other people and just lets the mess stew. *deeper sigh*
And then we reach the title scene! My take on Ginny's possession was that it happened gradually. Long before Tom had enough influence to make her blank out completely, he was able to manipulate her while she was asleep. Which is the source of Ginny's recurring dream about a princess searching through a castle for a dragon -- she is wandering through Hogwarts looking for the basilisk, because Tom's control isn't yet strong enough to make her go directly where he wants. She wakes near Myrtle's bathroom, narrowly escapes from Filch, and understandably panics.
Tom then explains everything away with psychology: she's stressed, she's in a strange place away from her parents (though he couches this as "away from her family," which is interesting since her brothers are technically also at Hogwarts! they just feel like they're "away" since they're busy with their own classes and friends), she feels betrayed by the mess with Daphne, etc. And Ginny buys it. She reiterates that Tom is her best friend, thus locking in his influence over the rest of her year, both through magic and through more mundane emotional manipulation.
And we close with Tom wasting some gathered power to be ominous for the reader's benefit. I'd get rid of that if I were writing this from scratch, since it takes several more chapters before he can do anything else outside the diary, but oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty. *wry*
Bechdel Test = PASS
