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edenfallingSummary: "Chamber of Secrets" from Ginny's point of view. Ginny's guilt over Colin's Petrification drives more wedges between her and her family, while the Dueling Club disaster and third attack rekindle students' terror of the Heir. Thank goodness Tom is still there to listen and comfort her!
Tangentially, I find my chapter summaries somewhat amusing to reread in their own right. They're mostly literal summaries -- a list of things that happen in the chapter in question -- but I was trying to write them in such a way that the references would be unclear until after a reader finished the chapter. Hence things like "Snape oozes nastiness," or "an Herbology class presents unforeseen challenges." There's also a strong tendency toward irony and/or rhetorical questions.
The spoiler-avoidance only applies to things that aren't canon, by the way. Anything that happened on-page in CoS basically gets described as-is, since I figure anyone reading HP fanfiction already knows that story. *wry*
Anyway, chapter stuff.
We open with Tom again pulling the mindgame trick of leading Ginny to tell him she won't go to the professors, instead of him ordering her to stay silent. This makes it feel like her own choice, and verbally defending that choice helps reinforce her determination to keep her sleepwalking and probably encounters with the Heir a secret.
The funny thing is that I didn't know much of anything about cult leaders or emotional manipulation at the time I wrote this, and yet here is Tom using that classic technique. It's a little unsettling in retrospect. Tom was always very easy to write -- I very rarely had to revise his dialogue, unlike almost every other character -- and it's a little eerie to know that all his words and actions come from somewhere in the depth of my own mind. Which suggests that on some level, I'd thought about the best way to manipulate an emotionally vulnerable girl, decided this was a good method... and hit on some techniques that real-world predators use. *twitch*
Ginny stomps off to see Sir Vladislav but runs into the twins en route. This scene exists to illustrate a single line from CoS: [The twins] were taking turns covering themselves with fur or boils and jumping out at her from behind statues. See, the paragraph that's from basically makes Ginny out as a delicate fainting flower -- "distraught" over Colin's Petrification and "having nightmares" as a direct result. So as per my general approach, I wanted to give Ginny back some agency. For one thing, I am showing precisely why she's distraught, and it's not just because some kid who sits next to her in Charms got in trouble; it's because she feels directly responsible for his fate. And for another, I wanted to have her react to the twins' antics -- to get angry -- instead of to fade offscreen in assumed passivity. So this became another wedge in the growing rift between Ginny and her brothers, and also an excuse to get Harry on-page for a moment, since presumably he saw at least one of those pranks.
Quick timeskip to December (by way of a mention of Ginny hexing Daphne in Potions, goodness; I must work that into chapter 15 as well) and a little Weasley family scene, wherein they jointly decide to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas in an attempt to avoid some awkward elderly relatives. The younger four basically blackmail Percy into staying so he won't make them look bad, and the twins reveal that he wrote to Mrs. Weasley and said they were giving Ginny nightmares. Ginny objects to both that action and that characterization of her mental state, but to no avail and Percy drags her off to the hospital wing for Pepperup Potion (which has been a running theme for a while now).
Another quick timeskip to the Dueling Club, almost at the end of term. Ginny heads toward Xanthe, Caroline, and Anne rather than any of the Gryffindors. (I should note for the record that Ginny, Xanthe, and Apple think Lockhart is a useless fraud. Anne, Caroline, Susan, Jia-li, and Gwen all think he's awesome. I don't recall if I gave Daphne, Electra, Ruth, or any of the Gryffindor boys an on-page opinion one way or the other.) For narrative convenience, I had Snape notice all the first years were standing more or less together and order them to pair up in their Potions work groups, with Anne shoved off to partner Jasper Leeds since Colin (Jasper's usual partner) is unavailable.
(Why yes, yes I do have files with the names and houses of all the students in Ginny's year. I decided there would be 41 of them, based on the numbers in Harry's year -- which incidentally means the total student body at Hogwarts is only 250-300 students (7 x 40, give or take) and J. K. Rowling cannot do math -- and I have further files where I tried to make heads or tails out of Hogwarts class schedules, eventually concluded block scheduling was the only answer (rather than set hourly lessons that repeat on all five days), and hashed out a schedule for Ginny that I then adhered to all the way through the story. Because if I am going to do world-building at all, I am going to do it right. *cough* *steps down from soapbox*)
Anyway, the Dueling Club scene is heavily cribbed from CoS, though obviously altered to fit Ginny's POV. Electra brings Daphne and Ruth over with her to confront Ginny, and they end up participating in the mass chaos when Daphne hexes Ginny from behind and Ginny then uses a modified garden-watering charm to soak the three Slytherins. I am not sure why I had them wearing makeup. Maybe they were just experimenting, or maybe they DO kind of like Lockhart and wanted to look nice? Daphne's line about "her best robe" suggests they were dressed up on purpose.
Anyway, Dueling Club, blah blah, summoned snake... I should mention that Ginny knows Serpensortia -- it's one of the random bits of advanced magic Tom has been teaching her. So she's aware that the snake is venomous and deadly, and is very relieved when Harry stops it. Caroline and Anne both react badly -- they get reflexively suspicious of Harry and this new apparent connection to Slytherin -- and Ginny stalks off to fume.
She ends up in Myrtle's bathroom, which surprises her, and she and Tom talk about Parseltongue, snakes, and people's tendency to think illogically and seek scapegoats when afraid. Again, a lot of what Tom says is true, but it's also couched in a way to make Ginny feel that she's better than her fellow first years, and so keep her from wanting to reach out to them.
Then, two brief dream sequences! The first fills a plot hole in CoS. There is no way Ginny should have known Justin Finch-Fletchley's schedule in enough detail to find a good time to attack him, so I had her break into McGonagall's office and check. That may not come across clearly in the text, but that's what I was trying to do. Then she sleepwalks again and kills a second rooster. She doesn't remember these dreams as clearly as the previous ones; Tom is moving closer to true possession, not just influence.
In the morning Ginny feels pretty tired and cruddy -- sleepwalking is not restful, nor is Tom's growing drain on her life -- but she resists Percy's attempt to take her to the hospital wing. Then we hit the first true possession moment, where she blanks out completely and has no memory of the intervening time, not even a blurred and symbolic dream; she closes her eyes in the Great Hall and opens them three hours later in the doorway of McGonagall's classroom. She's understandably freaked out, and then partway into her Transfiguration lesson, the third attack is discovered.
Ginny immediately assumes it's a frame job, but most students take this as proof of Harry's guilt. And we close the chapter with another little line from CoS elaborated into a full scene and tweaked to fit better with Ginny's actual personality: "Oh, don't," [Ginny] wailed every time Fred asked Harry loudly who he was planning to attack next, or when George pretended to ward Harry off with a large clove of garlic when they met. Ginny is more angry than distraught -- she thinks the joke isn't worth the way the twins are reinforcing everyone's wrong impression of Harry -- and also still feeling guilty over Colin which she is kind of turning outward as a general tendency to find fault with the whole world.
Hmm. I think that in this chapter alone, Ginny and Harry exchange more words than in the entirety of CoS, which is just ridiculous. That's an aspect of CoS -- Ginny's sidelining -- that has always annoyed me, by the way. CoS should properly be Ginny's story -- she's the one who hurts the most and the one whose choices drive the plot -- but she is shoved offscreen almost entirely so Rowling can focus on Harry's relatively trivial worries about his Slytherin character traits. Then her recovery -- which by all rights should be long and painful -- is glossed over in a grand total of one flippant paragraph. Which is both incredibly insulting on its own, and also REALLY STUPID from a series perspective, since apparently one thing that's supposed to make Ginny a good match for Harry is that she has also faced Voldemort (or at least a shadow thereof) and lived... but since her struggle was given no narrative weight whatsoever, to use it as a connection between her and Harry feels more like a deus ex machina than a natural development. And that is just plain bad writing. :-/
Anyway, Bechdel Test = PASS
Tangentially, I find my chapter summaries somewhat amusing to reread in their own right. They're mostly literal summaries -- a list of things that happen in the chapter in question -- but I was trying to write them in such a way that the references would be unclear until after a reader finished the chapter. Hence things like "Snape oozes nastiness," or "an Herbology class presents unforeseen challenges." There's also a strong tendency toward irony and/or rhetorical questions.
The spoiler-avoidance only applies to things that aren't canon, by the way. Anything that happened on-page in CoS basically gets described as-is, since I figure anyone reading HP fanfiction already knows that story. *wry*
Anyway, chapter stuff.
We open with Tom again pulling the mindgame trick of leading Ginny to tell him she won't go to the professors, instead of him ordering her to stay silent. This makes it feel like her own choice, and verbally defending that choice helps reinforce her determination to keep her sleepwalking and probably encounters with the Heir a secret.
The funny thing is that I didn't know much of anything about cult leaders or emotional manipulation at the time I wrote this, and yet here is Tom using that classic technique. It's a little unsettling in retrospect. Tom was always very easy to write -- I very rarely had to revise his dialogue, unlike almost every other character -- and it's a little eerie to know that all his words and actions come from somewhere in the depth of my own mind. Which suggests that on some level, I'd thought about the best way to manipulate an emotionally vulnerable girl, decided this was a good method... and hit on some techniques that real-world predators use. *twitch*
Ginny stomps off to see Sir Vladislav but runs into the twins en route. This scene exists to illustrate a single line from CoS: [The twins] were taking turns covering themselves with fur or boils and jumping out at her from behind statues. See, the paragraph that's from basically makes Ginny out as a delicate fainting flower -- "distraught" over Colin's Petrification and "having nightmares" as a direct result. So as per my general approach, I wanted to give Ginny back some agency. For one thing, I am showing precisely why she's distraught, and it's not just because some kid who sits next to her in Charms got in trouble; it's because she feels directly responsible for his fate. And for another, I wanted to have her react to the twins' antics -- to get angry -- instead of to fade offscreen in assumed passivity. So this became another wedge in the growing rift between Ginny and her brothers, and also an excuse to get Harry on-page for a moment, since presumably he saw at least one of those pranks.
Quick timeskip to December (by way of a mention of Ginny hexing Daphne in Potions, goodness; I must work that into chapter 15 as well) and a little Weasley family scene, wherein they jointly decide to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas in an attempt to avoid some awkward elderly relatives. The younger four basically blackmail Percy into staying so he won't make them look bad, and the twins reveal that he wrote to Mrs. Weasley and said they were giving Ginny nightmares. Ginny objects to both that action and that characterization of her mental state, but to no avail and Percy drags her off to the hospital wing for Pepperup Potion (which has been a running theme for a while now).
Another quick timeskip to the Dueling Club, almost at the end of term. Ginny heads toward Xanthe, Caroline, and Anne rather than any of the Gryffindors. (I should note for the record that Ginny, Xanthe, and Apple think Lockhart is a useless fraud. Anne, Caroline, Susan, Jia-li, and Gwen all think he's awesome. I don't recall if I gave Daphne, Electra, Ruth, or any of the Gryffindor boys an on-page opinion one way or the other.) For narrative convenience, I had Snape notice all the first years were standing more or less together and order them to pair up in their Potions work groups, with Anne shoved off to partner Jasper Leeds since Colin (Jasper's usual partner) is unavailable.
(Why yes, yes I do have files with the names and houses of all the students in Ginny's year. I decided there would be 41 of them, based on the numbers in Harry's year -- which incidentally means the total student body at Hogwarts is only 250-300 students (7 x 40, give or take) and J. K. Rowling cannot do math -- and I have further files where I tried to make heads or tails out of Hogwarts class schedules, eventually concluded block scheduling was the only answer (rather than set hourly lessons that repeat on all five days), and hashed out a schedule for Ginny that I then adhered to all the way through the story. Because if I am going to do world-building at all, I am going to do it right. *cough* *steps down from soapbox*)
Anyway, the Dueling Club scene is heavily cribbed from CoS, though obviously altered to fit Ginny's POV. Electra brings Daphne and Ruth over with her to confront Ginny, and they end up participating in the mass chaos when Daphne hexes Ginny from behind and Ginny then uses a modified garden-watering charm to soak the three Slytherins. I am not sure why I had them wearing makeup. Maybe they were just experimenting, or maybe they DO kind of like Lockhart and wanted to look nice? Daphne's line about "her best robe" suggests they were dressed up on purpose.
Anyway, Dueling Club, blah blah, summoned snake... I should mention that Ginny knows Serpensortia -- it's one of the random bits of advanced magic Tom has been teaching her. So she's aware that the snake is venomous and deadly, and is very relieved when Harry stops it. Caroline and Anne both react badly -- they get reflexively suspicious of Harry and this new apparent connection to Slytherin -- and Ginny stalks off to fume.
She ends up in Myrtle's bathroom, which surprises her, and she and Tom talk about Parseltongue, snakes, and people's tendency to think illogically and seek scapegoats when afraid. Again, a lot of what Tom says is true, but it's also couched in a way to make Ginny feel that she's better than her fellow first years, and so keep her from wanting to reach out to them.
Then, two brief dream sequences! The first fills a plot hole in CoS. There is no way Ginny should have known Justin Finch-Fletchley's schedule in enough detail to find a good time to attack him, so I had her break into McGonagall's office and check. That may not come across clearly in the text, but that's what I was trying to do. Then she sleepwalks again and kills a second rooster. She doesn't remember these dreams as clearly as the previous ones; Tom is moving closer to true possession, not just influence.
In the morning Ginny feels pretty tired and cruddy -- sleepwalking is not restful, nor is Tom's growing drain on her life -- but she resists Percy's attempt to take her to the hospital wing. Then we hit the first true possession moment, where she blanks out completely and has no memory of the intervening time, not even a blurred and symbolic dream; she closes her eyes in the Great Hall and opens them three hours later in the doorway of McGonagall's classroom. She's understandably freaked out, and then partway into her Transfiguration lesson, the third attack is discovered.
Ginny immediately assumes it's a frame job, but most students take this as proof of Harry's guilt. And we close the chapter with another little line from CoS elaborated into a full scene and tweaked to fit better with Ginny's actual personality: "Oh, don't," [Ginny] wailed every time Fred asked Harry loudly who he was planning to attack next, or when George pretended to ward Harry off with a large clove of garlic when they met. Ginny is more angry than distraught -- she thinks the joke isn't worth the way the twins are reinforcing everyone's wrong impression of Harry -- and also still feeling guilty over Colin which she is kind of turning outward as a general tendency to find fault with the whole world.
Hmm. I think that in this chapter alone, Ginny and Harry exchange more words than in the entirety of CoS, which is just ridiculous. That's an aspect of CoS -- Ginny's sidelining -- that has always annoyed me, by the way. CoS should properly be Ginny's story -- she's the one who hurts the most and the one whose choices drive the plot -- but she is shoved offscreen almost entirely so Rowling can focus on Harry's relatively trivial worries about his Slytherin character traits. Then her recovery -- which by all rights should be long and painful -- is glossed over in a grand total of one flippant paragraph. Which is both incredibly insulting on its own, and also REALLY STUPID from a series perspective, since apparently one thing that's supposed to make Ginny a good match for Harry is that she has also faced Voldemort (or at least a shadow thereof) and lived... but since her struggle was given no narrative weight whatsoever, to use it as a connection between her and Harry feels more like a deus ex machina than a natural development. And that is just plain bad writing. :-/
Anyway, Bechdel Test = PASS
