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edenfallingSummary: "Chamber of Secrets" from Ginny's point of view. Life doesn't stop and people don't leave Ginny alone just because she wants to escape. In an effort to fight back against Tom, she investigates Percy and possession, with varying degrees of success.
Aka, the other half of my answer to the "But if Ginny discovered that Harry had the diary on Valentine's Day, why did it take her three months to DO anything about that knowledge?" conundrum. (The real-world answer is, because Rowling didn't care about giving Ginny a coherent story arc and moved her around like a cardboard plot token, but I prefer to put a bit more thought into these things. *wry*) If part one of the answer is, "Because she doesn't trust herself to face Tom again and hopes that Harry will somehow miraculously fix things through some inherent heroic aura," part two is... well, OotP had been published by the time I wrote this chapter, Occlumency is very shiny, and I am an inveterate magpie when it comes to neat ideas.
Tangentially, Ron's birthday ought to happen in this chapter -- in fact, the opening scene with Ginny and the twins falls on March 1st (which was a Monday in 1993) -- but nobody so much as mentions it. That is entirely my fault and terribly sloppy story construction. :-( I am thinking very seriously of going back and fixing that, particularly since it would make a good set piece for Weasley family drama. Also, Ginny specifically says in this chapter that Ron is her favorite brother. She NEEDS to do something for his birthday.
But anyway, onward!
We open with Ginny stalking Harry in an attempt to figure out if Tom has affected him. She concludes that he's okay, but Percy is acting downright peculiar, which makes Ginny wonder if he might have confiscated the diary from Harry and fallen into Tom's grip. It's harder to stalk Percy than to stalk Harry, so she asks the twins for help. They lend her the Marauder's Map (though they don't tell her the activation phrase, just how to conceal it) for a day.
Ginny fakes coming down with a cold so she can skip classes and hunt Percy down; this is not the smoothest plan in the world, especially since she has a history of being under the weather (Tom's fault, ahahaha) and people therefore get more worried than she expects. But she successfully tracks him to an unused storage room (where he has no business being, so she's SURE he's up to no good)... and interrupts him kissing Penelope Clearwater. Oops. Percy makes her promise not to tell (by means of some very Weasley-ish threats), and Ginny finds herself wishing she could share the news with Tom, which bothers her -- he's evil, he's still draining her life through the binding spell, he's made explicit threats to people she holds dear, and yet she can't quite stop wishing she had her friend back.
Ginny skips an Herbology Club session, and both Professor Sprout and Xanthe express worry over her health. For once Ginny actually tells somebody (other than Tom or Sir Vladislav) something about what's bothering her, though of course she doesn't say anything about Tom or the Heir, but she admits to Xanthe that she feels isolated from her housemates (because of Daphne -- note that at this point she is still refusing any blame for their fight), finds her family exasperating, and thinks she might have accidentally cast a dangerous spell on herself. Xanthe is understandably worried and suggests that Ginny try translating the spell. Ginny distracts her before she can ask more questions, but later it occurs to her that she does know someone who speaks German.
She takes the spell to Sir Vladislav. He not only translates it, he recognizes it from the Thirty Years' War (which significantly predates the International Statute of Secrecy, FYI) and tells Ginny that anything she's done under that spell was not her fault; he's seen it used to make people do things they found so abhorrent they then killed themselves rather than live with the memory of performing those actions. Ginny starts to protest based on what Tom told her in chapter 9, but then realizes that of course Tom could and would have lied to make her think she was more complicit in his crimes than she actually was. She still insists that this must stay a secret. Sir Vladislav disapproves, but agrees to give her one week to try breaking the spell; if she can't, he will go tell the professors.
Ginny discovers that the spell involves Legilimency, and also discovers (to her dismay) that the books she'll need for her research are all in the Restricted Section. Fortunately, Xanthe has not forgotten their conversation, and at their weekly Herbology/Astronomy study session, suggests that Ginny ask Professor Sprout for a permission slip on some other pretext, since Ginny is one of Sprout's favorites.
The next Potions lesson builds on Ginny and Electra's growing... not friendship, but amicable working partnership, I guess. Electra even snaps at Daphne when Daphne makes a snide comment, which leads Ginny and Daphne to call a truce during Potions lessons (though not anywhere else!). Daphne insists she's going to make Ginny apologize, to which Ginny says, essentially, not in your dreams. Apple then points out that they're both at fault, and that they'd gotten on really well before they were Sorted, which makes Ginny feel kind of awkward and weird.
Ginny gets a pass to the Restricted Section with no trouble, and feels awful about lying to Professor Sprout. She reads up on Legilimency, which basically leaves her feeling she's up against impossible odds (fair enough, since she is). She tries to clear her mind and perform a basic Occlumency exercise, but of course it doesn't work.
Then we get another Herbology Club session, where Ginny partners with Neville. They're trying to make magical hybrids, and Ginny likes working with him because they share a similar approach to plants and projects. She tells him that, and Neville says that actually that's one reason Professor Sprout likes people to work with partners outside their own Houses. He also says that she shouldn't try to make people hate her (and maybe kind of awkwardly hints he has a crush on her? I dunno, it's been forever since I wrote this scene), which leaves Ginny feeling somewhat weirded out -- that puts the responsibility for her isolation on her, but it also implies that her lack of friends isn't due to an inherent trait but to a behaviour she could change if she wanted.
Wishing she could go back to when her life made sense, she imagines her bedroom at the Burrow -- the place she thinks of as her sanctuary, the safest center of her mind and self -- and suddenly the imagery comes to life and she can see and feel the connection tying her to Tom, like a string running from her wrist out through the half-opened door of her mental room. She tries to cut the string, but that proves impossible.
She does, however, manage to shut the door.
...
The gimmick with the mental room and the open/shut door imagery is, to be perfectly honest, somewhat cribbed from Yu-Gi-Oh! Like I said, I pick up and reuse shiny ideas. (In fact, if you compare this scene to some of the stuff with Sakura and Tom in "An Ounce of Prevention," well... I steal from myself just as readily as I steal from others. *wry*)
Hmm. You know, I think the story aspect that suffered most from the ridiculously attenuated pace at which I've been writing "Secrets" is Ginny's apparent age. She's pretty obviously eleven-ish in the first two or three chapters, but as time goes on, she skews noticeably older. Part of this is that she's facing bigger problems, but it's also because I don't have a real-life corrective for pre-teen behavior the way I do for 5-year-old to 8-year-old behavior. So I am trying to remember back to when I was Ginny's age, and memory is a fickle guide.
Ah well, so it goes.
Bechdel Test = PASS, multiple times
Aka, the other half of my answer to the "But if Ginny discovered that Harry had the diary on Valentine's Day, why did it take her three months to DO anything about that knowledge?" conundrum. (The real-world answer is, because Rowling didn't care about giving Ginny a coherent story arc and moved her around like a cardboard plot token, but I prefer to put a bit more thought into these things. *wry*) If part one of the answer is, "Because she doesn't trust herself to face Tom again and hopes that Harry will somehow miraculously fix things through some inherent heroic aura," part two is... well, OotP had been published by the time I wrote this chapter, Occlumency is very shiny, and I am an inveterate magpie when it comes to neat ideas.
Tangentially, Ron's birthday ought to happen in this chapter -- in fact, the opening scene with Ginny and the twins falls on March 1st (which was a Monday in 1993) -- but nobody so much as mentions it. That is entirely my fault and terribly sloppy story construction. :-( I am thinking very seriously of going back and fixing that, particularly since it would make a good set piece for Weasley family drama. Also, Ginny specifically says in this chapter that Ron is her favorite brother. She NEEDS to do something for his birthday.
But anyway, onward!
We open with Ginny stalking Harry in an attempt to figure out if Tom has affected him. She concludes that he's okay, but Percy is acting downright peculiar, which makes Ginny wonder if he might have confiscated the diary from Harry and fallen into Tom's grip. It's harder to stalk Percy than to stalk Harry, so she asks the twins for help. They lend her the Marauder's Map (though they don't tell her the activation phrase, just how to conceal it) for a day.
Ginny fakes coming down with a cold so she can skip classes and hunt Percy down; this is not the smoothest plan in the world, especially since she has a history of being under the weather (Tom's fault, ahahaha) and people therefore get more worried than she expects. But she successfully tracks him to an unused storage room (where he has no business being, so she's SURE he's up to no good)... and interrupts him kissing Penelope Clearwater. Oops. Percy makes her promise not to tell (by means of some very Weasley-ish threats), and Ginny finds herself wishing she could share the news with Tom, which bothers her -- he's evil, he's still draining her life through the binding spell, he's made explicit threats to people she holds dear, and yet she can't quite stop wishing she had her friend back.
Ginny skips an Herbology Club session, and both Professor Sprout and Xanthe express worry over her health. For once Ginny actually tells somebody (other than Tom or Sir Vladislav) something about what's bothering her, though of course she doesn't say anything about Tom or the Heir, but she admits to Xanthe that she feels isolated from her housemates (because of Daphne -- note that at this point she is still refusing any blame for their fight), finds her family exasperating, and thinks she might have accidentally cast a dangerous spell on herself. Xanthe is understandably worried and suggests that Ginny try translating the spell. Ginny distracts her before she can ask more questions, but later it occurs to her that she does know someone who speaks German.
She takes the spell to Sir Vladislav. He not only translates it, he recognizes it from the Thirty Years' War (which significantly predates the International Statute of Secrecy, FYI) and tells Ginny that anything she's done under that spell was not her fault; he's seen it used to make people do things they found so abhorrent they then killed themselves rather than live with the memory of performing those actions. Ginny starts to protest based on what Tom told her in chapter 9, but then realizes that of course Tom could and would have lied to make her think she was more complicit in his crimes than she actually was. She still insists that this must stay a secret. Sir Vladislav disapproves, but agrees to give her one week to try breaking the spell; if she can't, he will go tell the professors.
Ginny discovers that the spell involves Legilimency, and also discovers (to her dismay) that the books she'll need for her research are all in the Restricted Section. Fortunately, Xanthe has not forgotten their conversation, and at their weekly Herbology/Astronomy study session, suggests that Ginny ask Professor Sprout for a permission slip on some other pretext, since Ginny is one of Sprout's favorites.
The next Potions lesson builds on Ginny and Electra's growing... not friendship, but amicable working partnership, I guess. Electra even snaps at Daphne when Daphne makes a snide comment, which leads Ginny and Daphne to call a truce during Potions lessons (though not anywhere else!). Daphne insists she's going to make Ginny apologize, to which Ginny says, essentially, not in your dreams. Apple then points out that they're both at fault, and that they'd gotten on really well before they were Sorted, which makes Ginny feel kind of awkward and weird.
Ginny gets a pass to the Restricted Section with no trouble, and feels awful about lying to Professor Sprout. She reads up on Legilimency, which basically leaves her feeling she's up against impossible odds (fair enough, since she is). She tries to clear her mind and perform a basic Occlumency exercise, but of course it doesn't work.
Then we get another Herbology Club session, where Ginny partners with Neville. They're trying to make magical hybrids, and Ginny likes working with him because they share a similar approach to plants and projects. She tells him that, and Neville says that actually that's one reason Professor Sprout likes people to work with partners outside their own Houses. He also says that she shouldn't try to make people hate her (and maybe kind of awkwardly hints he has a crush on her? I dunno, it's been forever since I wrote this scene), which leaves Ginny feeling somewhat weirded out -- that puts the responsibility for her isolation on her, but it also implies that her lack of friends isn't due to an inherent trait but to a behaviour she could change if she wanted.
Wishing she could go back to when her life made sense, she imagines her bedroom at the Burrow -- the place she thinks of as her sanctuary, the safest center of her mind and self -- and suddenly the imagery comes to life and she can see and feel the connection tying her to Tom, like a string running from her wrist out through the half-opened door of her mental room. She tries to cut the string, but that proves impossible.
She does, however, manage to shut the door.
...
The gimmick with the mental room and the open/shut door imagery is, to be perfectly honest, somewhat cribbed from Yu-Gi-Oh! Like I said, I pick up and reuse shiny ideas. (In fact, if you compare this scene to some of the stuff with Sakura and Tom in "An Ounce of Prevention," well... I steal from myself just as readily as I steal from others. *wry*)
Hmm. You know, I think the story aspect that suffered most from the ridiculously attenuated pace at which I've been writing "Secrets" is Ginny's apparent age. She's pretty obviously eleven-ish in the first two or three chapters, but as time goes on, she skews noticeably older. Part of this is that she's facing bigger problems, but it's also because I don't have a real-life corrective for pre-teen behavior the way I do for 5-year-old to 8-year-old behavior. So I am trying to remember back to when I was Ginny's age, and memory is a fickle guide.
Ah well, so it goes.
Bechdel Test = PASS, multiple times
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-26 06:19 pm (UTC)*nods along with you*
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Date: 2013-04-27 01:07 am (UTC)