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edenfallingSummary: "Chamber of Secrets" from Ginny's point of view. Ginny tries to convince herself that she isn't guilty of Tom's crimes, with rather limited success. A tumultuous Valentine's Day does not help anything.
Welcome to the Ginny Weasley guilt extravaganza, two tickets per customer, you must be THIS tall to ride! (Sorry, bad joke. (Also, this is peanuts compared to the guilt-fest she throws after the Chamber.)) But yeah, this chapter is basically Ginny trying very hard to swim through troubled waters but still not thinking to tell anyone what's been going on, let alone actually ask for help. *thwaps her* I know exactly why she keeps her secrets -- I'm the one who built the mental box she's trapped in, after all -- but it's still immensely frustrating to watch her screw herself over.
We open with Ginny doing her best to act normal (well, normal for her based on her previous patterns this year) so nobody will realize anything is wrong... and then being hurt and angry that her act works and nobody notices that things are wrong. *headdesk* It's realistic, but again, so frustrating. She also starts to wonder if she's been wrong in her assessment of various other people -- Daphne, Apple, the other Gryffindor who believe Harry is the Heir -- but ends up concluding that no, she was right and they're all idiots and/or awful people. But she DOES decide to switch her way of dealing with them. Instead of blowing up in anger, she will ignore them. She writes this resolution, and then burns it when she realizes she's waiting for the words to sink into the parchment so Tom can read them.
(So this is when Ginny stops provoking Daphne, and their fight becomes one-sided. *makes note*)
Time passes and Valentine's Day looms on the horizon. Ginny has taken to visiting Hermione in the infirmary, and they commiserate over boys (even though they each think the other's target of affection is a weird and stupid choice). Hermione suggests Ginny send Harry a card, maybe with a poem, but Ginny turns out to have no talent whatsoever for poetry -- all she produces is limericks and doggerel, which eventually leads her to write a deliberately awful poem just to get the impulse out of her system. (This becomes relevant later.)
She goes to ask Sir Vladislav for advice, this time remembering to bring parchment and writing implements so he can answer her. He tells her to skip the poem and just tell Harry she likes him, or if that's too big a step, at least to tell him she admires him and believes he's not the Heir. Ginny produces a workable message after many false starts, and then tears up her poems just to be sure nobody will read them.
Then Valentine's Day arrives (or actually, the day after Valentine's Day, since the holiday itself fell on a Sunday in 1993 and Nearly-Headless Nick's Deathday Party dates CoS to the '92-'93 school year) and I cribbed the scene from canon with adjustments for Ginny's POV. And of course the poem is the deliberately awful one she'd written -- the one where she outright admitted she wants Harry, since she didn't think anyone would ever read it -- which means that not only did somebody rifle through her private possessions, that same person then used Ginny's poem to humiliate Harry in public.
But she doesn't have time to dwell on that, because she immediately notices that Draco Malfoy has picked up Tom's diary from the spilled contents of Harry's bag. Tom isn't gone. And now Tom has access to Harry. When Harry goes into Tom's memory that evening, his use of the diary allows Tom's ghost form to appear next to Ginny and taunt her; she remembers how persuasive Tom can be, and decides she MUST get the diary away from Harry. (Mostly to protect him, but perhaps also a little so he won't learn about her mistakes.)
Ginny is in a terrible mood the next day, which is not helped by Lockhart being Lockhart. Potions is surprisingly non-awful, however; Electra Summers expresses sympathy toward Ginny, saying that Daphne went too far stealing and using her poem that way. She also says she prefers having Ginny as her Potions partner to the idea of partnering Daphne, since Ginny is very good at Potions and Daphne is too careless. This surprises Ginny, who'd been thinking of the Slytherins as a monolothic enemy block, and she thinks to herself that while Slytherins can't be trusted, maybe they aren't necessarily evil. (Wow, look at that amazing lack of prejudice! /sarcasm)
Ginny then confronts Susan (whom she has realized was the one to steal the poem and give it to Daphne), and they have an inconclusive argument. Interestingly, Ginny does NOT confront Apple, though so far as she knows they are equally responsible for the prank. Possibly this is because Apple has -- so far -- never met Ginny's temper with temper. Or maybe it's because Apple also thinks Harry is innocent and Lockhart is a fraud. Or maybe Ginny just finds Apple slightly intimidating whereas Susan has a more familiar personality and style of social interaction. I don't remember what I was thinking there.
Ginny returns to Gryffindor Tower and resolves to steal the diary while Harry is out having a Transfiguration lesson. But before she reaches his dorm room, she encounters Percy (this is kind of a running joke by now, I guess?) coming out of a shower. He assumes she's trying to play a prank on the twins, sends her down to the common room, and then tries to lecture her on forgiveness. Ginny interrupts, wondering why he's wearing cologne, and when the perfume makes her sneeze, Percy hauls her off to the hospital wing yet again. (Definitely a running joke.) Madam Pomfrey agrees that the cologne is too strong, but she offers Ginny a bed to lie down for a while and rest in peace, since she does look a bit worn down. (She's probably heard about the singing Valentine, come to think of it.)
She doesn't stay long, however, because Apple arrives; apparently she suffers occasional migraines. Apple apologizes for not stopping Susan and Daphne. (My god, a person behaving in a mature and responsible fashion! Will wonders never cease!) She also says that Ginny brought their enmity on herself (true!) and will have to live with the consequences until and unless she fixes the situation (also true!). Ginny reacts badly to this -- her guilt over Tom and the Petrifications is bleeding over the rest of her life and warping her ability to deal with complicated emotional and ethical issues -- and storms off... but Apple's accusation makes her realize that Tom is HER mess and she's the one who needs to fix it. Permanently. Which means killing him.
Ginny has no idea if she can do that, particularly when she still wants Tom back -- or at least the false face he showed her, the person she thought was her best friend -- and decides she'll have to trust Harry (to be a hero, to be smarter than she is, to not fall into Tom's trap) until she's sure she can face him without letting him manipulate or possess her. Especially since she's also realized that the dragon in her dreams was probably a monster, and she can't risk Tom getting control of it again.
...
Angsty chapter of angst is, unsurprisingly, angsty. :-/
This is, as I mentioned, an extremely frustrating chapter for me to reread -- not because I think it's badly written, but because Ginny is trying so hard and coming up with all the wrong answers (well, except for her decision to stop provoking Daphne; that was a good choice; good for Ginny!) and I hate the sensation of the phantom mental box I can feel closing around me as I read. You see, when I started writing "Secrets," I was just at the beginning of my own fight with clinical depression -- I'd only admitted that I had a problem maybe a month before -- and in a lot of ways, Ginny's mental state mirrors my own mental state in 2002-2003. The specific details of my mental box were obviously different from hers, but the presumption of personal guilt and the bizarre idea that you have to do everything completely on your own or it somehow doesn't count are, in fact, ideas I held as absolute truths back then... though I guess somewhere deep down I was aware that there was something screwy about that world-view, seeing as how I assigned it to Ginny as an obstacle to overcome.
Following her thoughts here is a weird reminder of that time in my life.
Bechdel Test = PASS, by the way
Welcome to the Ginny Weasley guilt extravaganza, two tickets per customer, you must be THIS tall to ride! (Sorry, bad joke. (Also, this is peanuts compared to the guilt-fest she throws after the Chamber.)) But yeah, this chapter is basically Ginny trying very hard to swim through troubled waters but still not thinking to tell anyone what's been going on, let alone actually ask for help. *thwaps her* I know exactly why she keeps her secrets -- I'm the one who built the mental box she's trapped in, after all -- but it's still immensely frustrating to watch her screw herself over.
We open with Ginny doing her best to act normal (well, normal for her based on her previous patterns this year) so nobody will realize anything is wrong... and then being hurt and angry that her act works and nobody notices that things are wrong. *headdesk* It's realistic, but again, so frustrating. She also starts to wonder if she's been wrong in her assessment of various other people -- Daphne, Apple, the other Gryffindor who believe Harry is the Heir -- but ends up concluding that no, she was right and they're all idiots and/or awful people. But she DOES decide to switch her way of dealing with them. Instead of blowing up in anger, she will ignore them. She writes this resolution, and then burns it when she realizes she's waiting for the words to sink into the parchment so Tom can read them.
(So this is when Ginny stops provoking Daphne, and their fight becomes one-sided. *makes note*)
Time passes and Valentine's Day looms on the horizon. Ginny has taken to visiting Hermione in the infirmary, and they commiserate over boys (even though they each think the other's target of affection is a weird and stupid choice). Hermione suggests Ginny send Harry a card, maybe with a poem, but Ginny turns out to have no talent whatsoever for poetry -- all she produces is limericks and doggerel, which eventually leads her to write a deliberately awful poem just to get the impulse out of her system. (This becomes relevant later.)
She goes to ask Sir Vladislav for advice, this time remembering to bring parchment and writing implements so he can answer her. He tells her to skip the poem and just tell Harry she likes him, or if that's too big a step, at least to tell him she admires him and believes he's not the Heir. Ginny produces a workable message after many false starts, and then tears up her poems just to be sure nobody will read them.
Then Valentine's Day arrives (or actually, the day after Valentine's Day, since the holiday itself fell on a Sunday in 1993 and Nearly-Headless Nick's Deathday Party dates CoS to the '92-'93 school year) and I cribbed the scene from canon with adjustments for Ginny's POV. And of course the poem is the deliberately awful one she'd written -- the one where she outright admitted she wants Harry, since she didn't think anyone would ever read it -- which means that not only did somebody rifle through her private possessions, that same person then used Ginny's poem to humiliate Harry in public.
But she doesn't have time to dwell on that, because she immediately notices that Draco Malfoy has picked up Tom's diary from the spilled contents of Harry's bag. Tom isn't gone. And now Tom has access to Harry. When Harry goes into Tom's memory that evening, his use of the diary allows Tom's ghost form to appear next to Ginny and taunt her; she remembers how persuasive Tom can be, and decides she MUST get the diary away from Harry. (Mostly to protect him, but perhaps also a little so he won't learn about her mistakes.)
Ginny is in a terrible mood the next day, which is not helped by Lockhart being Lockhart. Potions is surprisingly non-awful, however; Electra Summers expresses sympathy toward Ginny, saying that Daphne went too far stealing and using her poem that way. She also says she prefers having Ginny as her Potions partner to the idea of partnering Daphne, since Ginny is very good at Potions and Daphne is too careless. This surprises Ginny, who'd been thinking of the Slytherins as a monolothic enemy block, and she thinks to herself that while Slytherins can't be trusted, maybe they aren't necessarily evil. (Wow, look at that amazing lack of prejudice! /sarcasm)
Ginny then confronts Susan (whom she has realized was the one to steal the poem and give it to Daphne), and they have an inconclusive argument. Interestingly, Ginny does NOT confront Apple, though so far as she knows they are equally responsible for the prank. Possibly this is because Apple has -- so far -- never met Ginny's temper with temper. Or maybe it's because Apple also thinks Harry is innocent and Lockhart is a fraud. Or maybe Ginny just finds Apple slightly intimidating whereas Susan has a more familiar personality and style of social interaction. I don't remember what I was thinking there.
Ginny returns to Gryffindor Tower and resolves to steal the diary while Harry is out having a Transfiguration lesson. But before she reaches his dorm room, she encounters Percy (this is kind of a running joke by now, I guess?) coming out of a shower. He assumes she's trying to play a prank on the twins, sends her down to the common room, and then tries to lecture her on forgiveness. Ginny interrupts, wondering why he's wearing cologne, and when the perfume makes her sneeze, Percy hauls her off to the hospital wing yet again. (Definitely a running joke.) Madam Pomfrey agrees that the cologne is too strong, but she offers Ginny a bed to lie down for a while and rest in peace, since she does look a bit worn down. (She's probably heard about the singing Valentine, come to think of it.)
She doesn't stay long, however, because Apple arrives; apparently she suffers occasional migraines. Apple apologizes for not stopping Susan and Daphne. (My god, a person behaving in a mature and responsible fashion! Will wonders never cease!) She also says that Ginny brought their enmity on herself (true!) and will have to live with the consequences until and unless she fixes the situation (also true!). Ginny reacts badly to this -- her guilt over Tom and the Petrifications is bleeding over the rest of her life and warping her ability to deal with complicated emotional and ethical issues -- and storms off... but Apple's accusation makes her realize that Tom is HER mess and she's the one who needs to fix it. Permanently. Which means killing him.
Ginny has no idea if she can do that, particularly when she still wants Tom back -- or at least the false face he showed her, the person she thought was her best friend -- and decides she'll have to trust Harry (to be a hero, to be smarter than she is, to not fall into Tom's trap) until she's sure she can face him without letting him manipulate or possess her. Especially since she's also realized that the dragon in her dreams was probably a monster, and she can't risk Tom getting control of it again.
...
Angsty chapter of angst is, unsurprisingly, angsty. :-/
This is, as I mentioned, an extremely frustrating chapter for me to reread -- not because I think it's badly written, but because Ginny is trying so hard and coming up with all the wrong answers (well, except for her decision to stop provoking Daphne; that was a good choice; good for Ginny!) and I hate the sensation of the phantom mental box I can feel closing around me as I read. You see, when I started writing "Secrets," I was just at the beginning of my own fight with clinical depression -- I'd only admitted that I had a problem maybe a month before -- and in a lot of ways, Ginny's mental state mirrors my own mental state in 2002-2003. The specific details of my mental box were obviously different from hers, but the presumption of personal guilt and the bizarre idea that you have to do everything completely on your own or it somehow doesn't count are, in fact, ideas I held as absolute truths back then... though I guess somewhere deep down I was aware that there was something screwy about that world-view, seeing as how I assigned it to Ginny as an obstacle to overcome.
Following her thoughts here is a weird reminder of that time in my life.
Bechdel Test = PASS, by the way
