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edenfallingSummary: "Chamber of Secrets" from Ginny's point of view. In this chapter, Ginny performs an incantation to help free Tom from the diary, the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch game is a spectacular disaster, and Colin takes an exasperated suggestion far too seriously. Is anyone safe from the Heir?
This chapter builds toward the second attack -- the one on Colin Creevey -- via a bunch of "life at Hogwarts" and "friends with Tom" scenes.
Tangentially, one reason my story is so much longer than the book it's retelling is that I spent time on detailed magic lessons, which Rowling tended to skim over in the first two books. I think I also spent more page time on dialogue, much of which is very rambling and not immediately plot-relevant. This is because "Secrets" is a much more internally focused story than CoS. CoS is a mystery adventure; its plot centers around the Trio finding and defeating Tom Riddle. The main plot arc of "Secrets" is about friendship and betrayal, and Ginny's emotional and ethical development under extreme pressure. This is also the reason it has a MUCH longer denouement than CoS. I have to deal with the emotional fallout, whereas Rowling could and did skip right over it with a single blithe paragraph. :-/
Anyway, details and stuff.
We open with Ginny returning to Myrtle's bathroom, by way of keeping her promise to polish Sir Vladislav's armor. Ginny makes an offer of friendship, which he accepts. This scene interests me because it's noticeably different from the way she acts when meeting new humans. Part of it may be that Sir Vladislav reminds her a little of Tom -- a voiceless consciousness in an enchanted object -- but it may also be that, as she says, he must get lonely. Since she also feels lonely, that's an instant point of connection.
And, of course, he DOES stand right across from Myrtle's bathroom. There may be some subconscious calculation going on. Ginny is definitely capable of calculation, as shown immediately afterward by the way she gets Myrtle to leave her alone for an hour and offers Sir Vladislav as a character witness (since she's just made an excellent impression on him).
Ginny then performs an incantation which Tom tells her is intended to let him borrow a little of her magic to gradually manifest a new body. Which is true, but not the whole truth. It's actually a spell of binding that basically signs her magic and the whole of her self over to him. She doesn't realize that because it's not in English. It's in German. Whoops.
So about that German thing...
Okay, first of all the spell is in German because that's the only non-English language I know to any useful degree. Second, it's in German because if Latin is the "language of spells" in the HP series, that probably means witches and wizards have at least a minimal grasp of Latinate roots and cognates and so on, and also Latin dictionaries will be much easier to find; if Tom wants to keep Ginny in the dark, Latin is not the safest language for him to use. And third, this is how I started to justify Sir Vladislav's presence -- he is the enchanted armor of a Teutonic Knight, so he speaks German.
Also German is just cool, but whatever. :-)
The Quidditch game is basically cribbed from canon, just adjusted so the action is told via Ginny watching rather than Harry experiencing. This section also contains a bunch of Ginny-and-Colin dialogue, with Ginny getting steadily more annoyed at him. This culminates in her making a sarcastic suggestion that the best way for him to apologize for being annoying would be to sneak into the infirmary at night with some food. (In hindsight, whoops.) Also, small note: Ginny specifically thinks to herself that she wants Gryffindor to win so she'll have something to hold over Daphne's head on Monday... which suggests to me that at this point in the year, she was still actively engaged in their rivalry, at least on a verbal level.
Ginny meets Xanthe for a study session, but before getting down to business they spend some time discussing the Quidditch match and the attack on Mrs. Norris. Ginny is relieved that Xanthe doesn't think Harry is the Heir, and they jointly agree that the enchanted Bludger probably wasn't the Heir's fault; the two events don't seem to have the same attitude behind them.
Ginny tells Tom about the Quidditch match and how she set Colin up to make a fool of himself by trying to see Harry that night. She wonders if this makes her a bad person. Tom soothes away her qualms, and then they're both distracted by the realization that Ginny is starting to be able to hear him, not just read his words, and can also see him as a sort of misty illusion shape when she opens the diary. The spell is working faster than they expected.
And then we get another dream scene, which Ginny wakes from in confusion and suspects that -- since she dreamed about some kind of nasty beast threatening her, the dragon fighting it, and then running -- she might have encountered the Heir again. Tom explains away the dream symbolism yet again, and then makes the interesting move of raising the possibility that maybe Ginny's sleepwalking is somehow connected to the Heir. This leads Ginny to vehemently deny that possibility -- she was sleepwalking long before the first attack, she says, so the Heir CAN'T be manipulating her. This is a classic mindgame technique. If you make something seem like a person's own idea, they will defend it much more tenaciously than if it's an idea they know comes from an outside source.
In the morning, Ginny heads for the library (and is intercepted by Percy, who insists on escorting her and is acting suspiciously cheerful) to experiment with her new ability to see and hear Tom. They find the boundaries and limits of his new ghost-like state of being and spend a comfortable morning away from the Hogwarts rumor mill, so Ginny only learns of Colin's Petrification when she heads down for lunch. She rushes to the infirmary, sees him lying frozen on a hospital bed, and is shooed away by Madam Pomfrey. She heads back to Gryffindor Tower feeling horribly guilty -- first for sending him into the corridors at night, and then because she thinks she probably encountered the Heir while sleepwalking and ran away leaving Colin to face him alone.
Interestingly, she decides NOT to talk to Tom right away, and her reasoning is that Tom will try to cheer her up and reason her out of guilt. She has noticed his habit of doing that, though she attributes it to friendship rather than evil manipulation. And right now, she wants to sort of wallow in guilt and punish herself, while still never thinking to tell anyone that she might have information about the attack that could help identify and stop the Heir.
Remember that pattern. It is very important.
Bechdel Test = PASS
This chapter builds toward the second attack -- the one on Colin Creevey -- via a bunch of "life at Hogwarts" and "friends with Tom" scenes.
Tangentially, one reason my story is so much longer than the book it's retelling is that I spent time on detailed magic lessons, which Rowling tended to skim over in the first two books. I think I also spent more page time on dialogue, much of which is very rambling and not immediately plot-relevant. This is because "Secrets" is a much more internally focused story than CoS. CoS is a mystery adventure; its plot centers around the Trio finding and defeating Tom Riddle. The main plot arc of "Secrets" is about friendship and betrayal, and Ginny's emotional and ethical development under extreme pressure. This is also the reason it has a MUCH longer denouement than CoS. I have to deal with the emotional fallout, whereas Rowling could and did skip right over it with a single blithe paragraph. :-/
Anyway, details and stuff.
We open with Ginny returning to Myrtle's bathroom, by way of keeping her promise to polish Sir Vladislav's armor. Ginny makes an offer of friendship, which he accepts. This scene interests me because it's noticeably different from the way she acts when meeting new humans. Part of it may be that Sir Vladislav reminds her a little of Tom -- a voiceless consciousness in an enchanted object -- but it may also be that, as she says, he must get lonely. Since she also feels lonely, that's an instant point of connection.
And, of course, he DOES stand right across from Myrtle's bathroom. There may be some subconscious calculation going on. Ginny is definitely capable of calculation, as shown immediately afterward by the way she gets Myrtle to leave her alone for an hour and offers Sir Vladislav as a character witness (since she's just made an excellent impression on him).
Ginny then performs an incantation which Tom tells her is intended to let him borrow a little of her magic to gradually manifest a new body. Which is true, but not the whole truth. It's actually a spell of binding that basically signs her magic and the whole of her self over to him. She doesn't realize that because it's not in English. It's in German. Whoops.
So about that German thing...
Okay, first of all the spell is in German because that's the only non-English language I know to any useful degree. Second, it's in German because if Latin is the "language of spells" in the HP series, that probably means witches and wizards have at least a minimal grasp of Latinate roots and cognates and so on, and also Latin dictionaries will be much easier to find; if Tom wants to keep Ginny in the dark, Latin is not the safest language for him to use. And third, this is how I started to justify Sir Vladislav's presence -- he is the enchanted armor of a Teutonic Knight, so he speaks German.
Also German is just cool, but whatever. :-)
The Quidditch game is basically cribbed from canon, just adjusted so the action is told via Ginny watching rather than Harry experiencing. This section also contains a bunch of Ginny-and-Colin dialogue, with Ginny getting steadily more annoyed at him. This culminates in her making a sarcastic suggestion that the best way for him to apologize for being annoying would be to sneak into the infirmary at night with some food. (In hindsight, whoops.) Also, small note: Ginny specifically thinks to herself that she wants Gryffindor to win so she'll have something to hold over Daphne's head on Monday... which suggests to me that at this point in the year, she was still actively engaged in their rivalry, at least on a verbal level.
Ginny meets Xanthe for a study session, but before getting down to business they spend some time discussing the Quidditch match and the attack on Mrs. Norris. Ginny is relieved that Xanthe doesn't think Harry is the Heir, and they jointly agree that the enchanted Bludger probably wasn't the Heir's fault; the two events don't seem to have the same attitude behind them.
Ginny tells Tom about the Quidditch match and how she set Colin up to make a fool of himself by trying to see Harry that night. She wonders if this makes her a bad person. Tom soothes away her qualms, and then they're both distracted by the realization that Ginny is starting to be able to hear him, not just read his words, and can also see him as a sort of misty illusion shape when she opens the diary. The spell is working faster than they expected.
And then we get another dream scene, which Ginny wakes from in confusion and suspects that -- since she dreamed about some kind of nasty beast threatening her, the dragon fighting it, and then running -- she might have encountered the Heir again. Tom explains away the dream symbolism yet again, and then makes the interesting move of raising the possibility that maybe Ginny's sleepwalking is somehow connected to the Heir. This leads Ginny to vehemently deny that possibility -- she was sleepwalking long before the first attack, she says, so the Heir CAN'T be manipulating her. This is a classic mindgame technique. If you make something seem like a person's own idea, they will defend it much more tenaciously than if it's an idea they know comes from an outside source.
In the morning, Ginny heads for the library (and is intercepted by Percy, who insists on escorting her and is acting suspiciously cheerful) to experiment with her new ability to see and hear Tom. They find the boundaries and limits of his new ghost-like state of being and spend a comfortable morning away from the Hogwarts rumor mill, so Ginny only learns of Colin's Petrification when she heads down for lunch. She rushes to the infirmary, sees him lying frozen on a hospital bed, and is shooed away by Madam Pomfrey. She heads back to Gryffindor Tower feeling horribly guilty -- first for sending him into the corridors at night, and then because she thinks she probably encountered the Heir while sleepwalking and ran away leaving Colin to face him alone.
Interestingly, she decides NOT to talk to Tom right away, and her reasoning is that Tom will try to cheer her up and reason her out of guilt. She has noticed his habit of doing that, though she attributes it to friendship rather than evil manipulation. And right now, she wants to sort of wallow in guilt and punish herself, while still never thinking to tell anyone that she might have information about the attack that could help identify and stop the Heir.
Remember that pattern. It is very important.
Bechdel Test = PASS
