Ginny stared at the blank stretch of wall. “You’re sure I’m not about to get cursed to death?”
“Watch for hexes,” Cyrus said with a shrug. “They get tossed around a lot and some people will try to test you.”
“Can’t be worse than my brothers,” Ginny said, and meant it.
You’ll be fine, the voice said. Pathetic schoolchildren, most of them.
“Calla lily,” Xander said.
The wall rumbled aside. Ginny let her friends tow her into the Slytherin common room.
They didn’t stop or act like anything was out of the ordinary. Don’t stare like a Muggle. Eyes forward, chin up, keep your face blank, ignore them, the voice said, talking fast, and Ginny clung to its instructions. She didn’t think she was imagining how the room had quieted down when they walked in and the thirty or so Slytherins around the room realized a Gryffindor and a Weasley had just joined them.
Astor and Xander carried right on talking about their latest boring History essay. All four of them settled into a group of chairs in a corner of the common room. Ginny pulled out her schoolbag and kept her head down, and gradually the noise level picked back up.
Good job, the voice said. You’re fine to look around by now if you’re subtle.
“What d’you think?” Cyrus said quietly. Astor grinned at her.
Ginny glanced around, trying to just move her eyes. On the back wall, opposite the entrance, a few glass-paneled windows looked into the Black Lake, although all she could see was some kelp clinging to the sill. Bookshelves framed two big hearths like the ones in Gryffindor Tower on the other two sides of the room. Each hearth had a door next to it, probably leading to the dorms. The middle of the common room was a maze of couches, low tables, varnished wood dining-style tables, and single armchairs. Balls of soft white witchlight floated around near the ceiling, but they weren’t very bright, and the general effect was dim and intimate. Everything was done in green and black and silver.
“It’s quiet,” Ginny said.
Astor laughed. “I bet, compared to you lions.”
You, a lion, the voice said. Ha.
Ginny ignored it.
“Where’ve you been?” Neville said. “I never see you around the tower lately.”
Ginny glanced up the hallway, at Ron and Harry and Hermione. The sight of Harry’s messy black hair didn’t make her nervous anymore. She couldn’t decide if it was nice to not have to deal with that, or if she missed having a crush on him. “Promise you won’t tell?”
“Of course.” Neville frowned. “It’s that bad?”
“The Slytherins let me into their common room,” she said, looking at him through the hair falling in her eyes. Secrets shared tied people together.
Especially insecure pustules like him.
Ginny blinked. She didn’t think of Neville as a pustule. Insecure, yeah, and a little irritating sometimes, but not a pustule. Did she?
“They did?” Neville’s eyes were as big as plates. “Ginny—I mean, I know you’re friends with a few from your year-mates, but… it’s okay for you, being in there?”
“Yes,” she said, remembering evenings in the common room with Astor and Cyrus and Xander. Sometimes Millicent or one of the first-years would join them for a bit, or maybe Theo, who’d upgraded to first names with Ginny since Cyrus was his second cousin. There were casual hexes sent her way, most of which she dodged or blocked, and some of which she returned. Books on the shelves that she hadn’t had the courage to look at, because she was pretty sure some of them were Dark Arts and that would start an argument. “It’s fun. They’re fine. They let Luna come, too, when she wants.”
“Huh.” Neville shrugged. “I mean, if they’re decent. I get why you don’t want that lot to know.”
They looked at the Gryffindor golden trio again. At least, Neville did. Ginny was watching the way everyone else’s attention tugged gently in their direction, even in a crowded hall of students going to or from classes. She swallowed a sneer.
“Thanks, Nev,” she said.
“No problem.”
“Expecto patronum!”
Nothing.
Ginny scowled at her wand and thought about—that first night sneaking out to fly, night air and clean speed cutting away the mental fog. Freedom.
When she could feel the emotions as strongly as she had then, she tried again.“Expecto patronum!”
Nothing.
She made a strangled noise of frustration and resisted the urge to throw her wand.
Those aren’t enough, the voice snapped. The memories, the emotions. You simply have to want it badly enough. The book said the Patronus is fueled by emotion that makes you want to manifest it. Not just by happiness. Happiness is not all you are.
“I want it pretty freaking bad,” Ginny snapped. Then she realized she was talking to an empty room and started laughing while leaning on the wall. Circe, she really was going crazy.
She had a voice inside her head. Her best guess was that she’d started talking to herself to compensate for not having Tom to talk to anymore—which was just all kinds of sick. And now she’d started talking out loud.
Maybe she should go back to the mind healers.
No, the voice said. No need for that. It’s a coping mechanism, that’s all. Try the spell again. If you don’t want it just to chase off the dementors—want it so you can prove you can do it even without Hermione’s help.
Ginny’s eyes narrowed. That was a good point. Since the Quidditch game, she’d heard Harry was getting anti-dementor lessons from Lupin. Ginny didn’t like the quiet professor. Anyone that quiet all the time, that controlled, had something to hide.
You do realize you could be talking about yourself.
I am hiding something, Ginny snapped back in her head. I’m crazy.
Try the spell again.
She did.
Four tries later, magic surged down her arm and shaped into a wobbly transparent silver shield. She whooped and it died and she slumped to the floor in exhaustion, but it was a start. A start.
“Miss Weasley, if I might have a word?”
“Yes, Professor,” she said, politely.
“I’ll save you a seat,” Astor murmured, touching her elbow and darting away after the boys.
Ginny shifted her cauldron in her grip as she followed McGonagall. They had Potions after breakfast on Mondays, and she didn’t have a bag with an extension charm because Mum and Dad couldn’t work them and they couldn’t afford to buy one, so she had to carry the dratted thing.
McGonagall paused in one of the visitors’ offices on the ground floor, near the entrance hall. “I shall furnish you with a note for class, so do not fear tardiness,” she said briskly. “Miss Weasley, can you guess why we’re here?”
Don’t say anything. Make her spell it out.
I’m not an idiot, Ginny replied. “No, Professor.”
McGonagall sighed through her nose. “It’s not proper for you to be sitting with the Slytherins. House bonds are a time-honored tradition here at Hogwarts.”
Good thing you’ve kept the dorm visits a secret. “They’re my friends,” Ginny said. She ducked her head and twisted her hands together in front of her, shoulders curling, the posture learned from years of convincing Mum to take her side against the boys. Ron especially hated it because he couldn’t lie to save his life. “Last year, after… everything… they were the only ones who were nice to me. And I still eat with the Gryffindors at dinner.”
“I must insist that you sit with your own House at all meals,” McGonagall began.
Ask if this is an actual rule.
“Is that a rule?” Ginny interrupted.
McGonagall blinked. “I… do not believe that it has ever been a problem, or that there has been a rule.”
“Then I’ll keep sitting with the Slytherins at breakfast,” Ginny said. “No one even notices, except my friends. And isn’t inter-house unity important?”
McGonagall looked at her like a puzzle for a long moment. She’s a rude old biddy with a stick up her bum, the voice said contemptuously. Ginny bit her lips to keep them twitching. Crazy or not, her subconscious had a good sense of humor.
“Very well,” she said at last. “You may continue, for now.”
I wasn’t asking permission, since I’m not breaking a rule, Ginny wanted to say. “Thank you, Professor,” she said instead, and took her note, and got to class.
“Rigid old fart,” Cyrus sniffed, when she told him and Xander and Astor the story over their cauldrons. Ginny was working with Xander today, and doing all the work because he was almost as bad at brewing as Neville.
“Want to spend the night tonight?” Astor said with a smirk. “You can just share my bed, if you grab clean clothes for tomorrow.”
Ginny thought about her roommates ignoring her and getting quiet when she came in the dorm, the noise level of Gryffindor versus Slytherin, about McGonagall telling her she couldn’t spend time with her actual friends. “Sure.” She chucked some sliced flobberworms into her cauldron hard enough to splash potion on her sleeve. It smoked up with a smell like rotten eggs and she winced. More stains on her secondhand robes. “Sounds like fun.”
Snape was the next one to call her on it, right before Christmas break. “Miss Weasley, Miss Greengrass,” he called from behind as they left the common room.
“Crap,” Cyrus sighed.
“We’ll save you breakfast,” Xander added. He and Cyrus jogged to catch up with Theo and Blaise and Millicent.
Ginny and Astor turned to wait for Snape. Big eyes, do the innocent act, the voice advised, and Ginny did so without thinking. It worked on Mum and Percy all the time. Next to her, Astor did more or less the same thing, except with dimples.
Snape frowned down at them both. “I condoned the presence of an outsider in our common room because my students wished it and the prefects voted to agree,” he said in a voice like silk. It might’ve scared Ginny if she hadn’t grown up around Mum’s rages, Fred and George’s complete disinterest in boundaries, and Charlie’s creatures. If she hadn’t met and been possessed by a teenage boy in a diary with eyes as cold and dead as a shark’s.
Compared to Tom, Snape was a fluffy black kitten.
She clenched one fist, hidden in her robes.
“Sleeping here is taking it a step farther.”
“The other girls are fine,” Astor said sweetly. “I checked.”
“Really,” Snape drawled.
“They really are, sir,” Ginny said earnestly. Margot Robinson, Siobhan Avery, and Thalia Rowle weren’t Ginny’s friends exactly but they had an arrangement. Dealing with Slytherins wasn’t too different from dealing with Fred and George, really—assume everyone has an angle and never drop your guard. Thalia was indirectly the leader of that little clique and after Ginny disarmed her in an impromptu duel, and then gave as good as she got to Margot’s insults, they all got along fine.
He studied her for another few seconds. “You are not a Slytherin, Miss Weasley.”
She remembered putting a hat on her head, the words Well, well, another Weasley whispered into her mind. “I know,” Ginny said as her nails bit into her palm.
“Miss Lovegood has not been joining you?” he said.
Astor shook her head. “Luna likes Ravenclaw Tower better. They have singles.”
Snape sighed. “No more than three nights a week. The same restrictions regarding what you may speak of to others apply.” He fixed them both with a glare that made Ginny gulp. Just because he wasn’t the scariest person she’d ever dealt with didn’t mean he wasn’t scary. “Do not make me regret the allowances I give.”
“I won’t, thank you!” Ginny said.
“Miss Weasley.”
Ginny glanced up at Madam Pince. “Yeah?”
Pince glared at her. “The Headmaster wishes to see you. He’s outside.”
Nerves fluttered in her stomach. “Thanks, I’ll… be right there.”
Madam Pince sniffed and stalked away, probably to yell at someone for turning pages too loudly. Ginny swallowed and packed her things with hands that trembled only a little.
Dumbledore, who said she’ll be perfectly all right, she just needs home cooking and rest and normalcy. Who thought she was fine. Who was stupid enough to let a Cerberus in a school, guarding an ancient artifact as bait for a Dark Lord when he had kids to protect, who didn’t notice Ginny was possessed—
Ron and Harry worshipped Dumbledore. Ginny couldn’t. She didn’t like him. She really didn’t want to talk to him. She definitely didn’t trust him.
And you shouldn’t, the voice said.
She swallowed and pulled her bag over her shoulder and left the library.
Dumbledore waited outside, hands folded in front of him like he could wait there forever. “Dear girl,” he said with a wide smile. “How are you today?”
“I’m good, thank you,” Ginny said.
“Glad to hear it.” Dumbledore tilted his head a bit, twinkling eyes boring into hers. “I simply wanted to check in with you. After the unfortunate events of last year, I would be remiss to not ensure you’re feeling well.”
“I’m fine,” Ginny said. “It’s… summer—helped. I mean—some things are hard, but… I’m doing fine.”
She felt this bizarre urge to keep talking and bit down on her tongue, hard. That wasn’t her. Ginny knew how to keep her mouth shut and not say too much to prying adults.
Dumbledore looked at her for a few seconds. Then he blinked and sighed. The niggling urge to use him as a therapist went away. “I’m glad to hear it,” he repeated. “If you need anything whatsoever, both I and Madam Pomfrey are available to help you. We all want to see you settle into Gryffindor, since you weren’t really able to last year.”
“I’m totally happy with the friends I have,” Ginny said with a tight smile.
“I’m sure you are,” he said soothingly. “It just seems that having friends in one’s own dorm as well as outside it would be nice. Of course, it’s entirely your decision. Have a lovely day, Miss Weasley.”
She watched him walk away, bright yellow robes brushing the floor. Astor was waiting in the common room to work on their Defense assignments, but maybe she should go back to Gryffindor instead…
No, she thought. That wasn’t Ginny either. She shook her head, hard, feeling like she was clearing a different kind of fog. Astor was her best friend.
Feeling cold, she set off for the dungeons, glad it was the opposite direction Dumbledore had gone.
She stayed at school over Christmas break. When Mum asked why, Ginny just said she felt better at Hogwarts with all of the other students to keep her mind occupied, and since Ron and Harry and Hermione were here… Mum agreed right away.
“I don’t need you to keep me company,” Cyrus said when Ginny showed up in the Slytherin dorms the first morning of break.
“I know,” she said, plopping down across from him. “But I didn’t want to go home and Astor and Xander and Luna are gone, so who else am I going to hang out with?”
“The golden trio?” Cyrus said with a mocking grin.
Ginny sneered. “As if.”
Xander got her a wrist holster for her wand like most Slytherins wore, since they needed easy access to their wands for impromptu duels. There was a nice cloak with growth charms from Astor and the green robes from the shopping trip from Cyrus, even though Ginny knew he’d never admit to having taken note of them that day. Luna’s gift was a set of hairpins with tiny living orchids on the ends that glowed in the dark. If Ginny looked really closely, she could just see runes in their centers, but not what they said, if anything. Since it was Luna she might’ve added the runes just because she liked their shapes.
Her return gifts were chosen in Slytherin fashion, within her limited budget and tailored to the people she gave them to. Ginny wrote home asking Mum for yarn and knitting spells, and it wasn’t too hard to make Luna a blue scarf with her name spelled out in bronze runes on one end. Astor got one with a silver snake on green instead of her name, and she gave Cyrus a rare old history book nicked from Percy. He’d raged for a week about it getting lost but no one ever suspected Ginny of anything, much less stealing books. Xander got a cloak pin she’d painstakingly transfigured into the shape of a sparrow midflight.
No one in Gryffindor really paid her much attention at all, actually.
She spent the holiday exploring Hogwarts with Cyrus, tracing the secret passages Fred and George hinted at in their stories. They got in a few snowball fights and ate in the kitchens and let their homework slide until the last few days before term started again.
Some of the most forbidden books in Hogwarts’ library waited patiently on the shelves in front of her. Ginny felt like choking.
Getting into the Restricted Section had involved two weeks of planning and stealing Harry’s Invisibility Cloak from his trunk. She felt a little bad for taking it but she was going to put it back and if he wanted to keep it safe, he should’ve warded his trunk, and been more careful about keeping her from eavesdropping on him and Ron. She had to creep around and dodge Mrs. Norris and if she was caught she would lose so many points, but she had to know.
The voice was oddly silent during the whole adventure.
“Possession,” Ginny murmured, eyeing the books suspiciously. “I need books on possession.”
The books shuddered. A few spines slid a little farther out from the rest. Ginny collected most of those, although she avoided the ones that seemed to reach and cling to her fingers, since books that wanted to be read were often the most dangerous.
If only I’d listened to that lesson last year, she thought bitterly, carrying the stack over to a corner.
Four of the books were mostly useless. She figured she shouldn’t be surprised they kept any detailed information on possession off the shelves, even in the Restricted Section. On the fifth, though, she found something interesting.
That definitely shouldn’t be in a library, the voice said, perking up at the title. Ginny traced the letters embossed in the cover of the book: Magicke of the Mind.
Probably not, she thought back, flipping it open.
The ink was old and the font was weird, but she could still read it fine. She flipped to the chapter on possession and started reading the introduction.
The art of taking over another living thing’s mind and inhabiting its body, known as possession, has many forms. It remains one of the most complex, discouraged, and least explored branches of magic known to wizardkind. That said, there are two primary forms of possession—that in which the possessed is unwilling, and forcibly subsumed, and that in which the possessed grants their full consent. The former is far more common and requires much less finesse. There are many spells, rituals, magical workings, and other factors that can result in this form of possession, among them necessity and force of will, which will be covered later in the chapter.
However one initiates the possession, the possessed’s consciousness becomes impotent and helpless, while the possessor’s consciousness takes full control of the body. Though we do not fully understand the nature of magic or why magicals can wield it while muggles cannot, we do know that there is a physical component to a wizard or witch’s ability to cast spells. The possessor, then, relies on their victim’s magical strength to cast spells. The possessor retains their magic but it goes entirely toward sustaining the possessor’s consciousness, and otherwise remains dormant.
This connection between the physical and the mental is crucial for understanding possession. Though magic in and of itself can sustain a magical’s consciousness outside their original body, or in another’s, the brain of the victim is physically a perfect match for the victim’s consciousness. There is an intricate connection between neural structures and the shape of the consciousness that inhabits them. Forced possession subsumes not only the victim’s mind but their body and magic to the will of the possessor. Over time, the victim’s magic and body will attempt to adjust to better suit the possessor and thus reduce the strain taken by prolonged possession. However, this sort of adaptation is taxing and rarely possible unless the possessor and victim exhibit compatible minds and comparable magickal strength. It is for this reason that possessed animals degrade and die rapidly—they are ill-suited for harboring a human consciousness—and that victims of possession frequently return to themselves and subsequently experience mild to severe difficulties fitting into their own previous life.
Consensual possession is a vastly different matter. Some scholars have argued that it is not, in fact, true possession, as the natural consciousness and the foreign one share the body as equally as they desire. There have been cases recorded of a magical voluntarily allowing someone else to live their life for a time, of one person harboring another inside their mind and body to protect them from danger, and instances of magical rituals gone awry forcing two minds to share one body for the body’s natural life. This is, however, extremely rare. Allowing another consciousness to take up residence in a body not its own, and share it with the mind that was originally there, is among the most significant disruptions to the natural order that magic can produce. Only soul magic is more severe. True consent to this state of being must be given on every level from the conscious to the deepest subconscious, and is much more difficult to give than most people would expect.
The results, however, are rarely the same and always fascinating. The physical structures of the host body may change over time to better accommodate both consciousnesses, but it is a subtler process with little to no negative impact. Magical strength and force of will may mean one consciousness is stronger than the other, and force the other out of control for a time, but every documented case of consensual possession has had very few battles for control of the body, as the two people inside it by definition wanted to work together.
I could find only two cases in which the host consciousness revoked consent after the possession had been underway. When Muggle “witch hunts” turned up a witch or wizard, one of their companions, who was as yet undiscovered, might consent to host their friend or lover’s mind in their own body and fake their death. This was not an uncommon practice during the witch hunts despite the danger of possession rituals. However, in these two cases, the host could not bear sharing every part of their mind with another—likely their Occlumency was too weak to keep their consciousness separate from the guest’s. As the possession had already been established, changing their mind did nothing to change the state of affairs, and the native mind’s magic turned on themselves to eradicate the unwelcome presence. Both cases resulted in the complete destruction of the host bodies and both consciousnesses inhabiting them.
Ginny closed the book with trembling hands.
So that’s why—
Sneers that feel too natural on her face, tests that were easier to take, reflexive disdain when Ron talked about chivalry, her dead crush on Harry, a voice in her head—a thousand moments that meant nothing on their own but taken together meant something big.
Tom possessed her. Not for long, never for very long, and she thought wildly he had probably just not wanted to damage her before he finished what he wanted to do—but he did it, and it changed her.
Not all of her was Ginny Weasley, anymore. Some of her was—different.
Ginny buried her head in her hands and breathed through her nose. The voice was trying to talk but she shut it out and ignored it and focused on her.
If last year had taught her anything about herself, it was what she felt like with him gone. Those first days in the hospital wing, desperately empty and alone—she’d gotten used to sharing her head, she’d felt awful when it was just her in there, but she’d learned the exact borders of herself. “I’m still Ginny,” she whispered to the mostly-dark library. Her nails dug into her scalp and drew blood. “I’m still—I broke the rules before all this, I loved flying before all this—I’m still me.”
Mostly, the voice said wickedly.
Ginny imagined kicking it in the teeth.
She took Magicke of the Mind with her when she left. With it under the Cloak, the library’s wards slid over it like oil over a hot pan, and she carried it up to her room in Gryffindor. The rest of the chapter on possession was way too complicated for her to understand but there was a big section on Occlumency and she wanted to look that up. Any magic that helped protect her mind was one she wanted to learn.
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