Ginny crept quietly down the corridor, following a sweet voice that was singing a song she didn’t know, yet it was so familiar to her. She opened a door with a lion etched into its surface and found herself in a room draped in black with stone walls and floors. In the middle of the room was a giant statue of a great snake, and the form of Tom Riddle muttering what sounded like half song, half spell. Ginny ran up to him but then he morphed into Snape, who warped around to look like Malfoy.

Ginny woke, drenched in her own hot sweat. “Stupid Chamber, stupid Riddle, stupid, stupid, stupid…” she continued to curse under her breath at the day that has haunted her dreams for five years as she fumbled through her trunk for a clean set of robes and some pants to wear for the day. She slouched down to the Great Hall for breakfast, when she saw Draco Malfoy making quite a noise come from the Slytherin table. Ginny subconsciously found herself admiring the way his perfectly chiselled hands swept through the air as he animated his speech, the way not a strand of hair fell out of place as he laughed, the way his steely eyes roamed the hall and pierced her gaze. Ginny gasped and looked away when his eyes met hers. She couldn’t believe she’d just thought about Malfoy as if he were even remotely human, let alone let her mind wander to thoughts about what a marvellously composed human he was.

She sat down opposite Ron and Harry and joined in their conversation about the prime Quidditch conditions for today’s practise. At one point, Ginny looked up over her plate of scrambled eggs to see Draco looking intently in her direction, and to her great surprise, winked at her.

“Ginny? What’s up?” Hermione had just sat down next to her and gently pushed her jaw up for it had fallen open when Malfoy had winked at her.

“Wha-? Oh, nothing. I was just, um… thinking about… erh… Quidditch Practise! Yeah, um… great playing conditions today...hmmm…” Ginny looked away towards the Staff Table and began shovelling toast into her mouth to avoid further questioning from Hermione. This tactic seemed to work because Hermione, who amazingly accepted Ginny’s feeble excuse, pulled out her Transfiguration book and propped it against an empty crystal vase so she could read while she ate.

Harry and Ron finished breakfast not long after this and made their way to the change rooms to get ready for practise. Ginny leapt from her chair to follow them. Once she’d changed into her scarlet team robes (which were once Fred’s), she slipped out of the change rooms and onto the pitch.

Practise was much the same as always. Harry took them through some passing, dodging, and flying drills and the Slytherin team showed up half way through to laugh and jeer at the Gryffindors who were now practising formation flying. When they started playing a mini practise match, the emerald-clad group started up a verse of the ever popular ‘Weasley is our King’.

Ginny was seeker for the practise match and agilely spiralled through her airborne team mates in search for the elusive Golden Snitch. She was just getting frustrated after a good 20 minutes of searching when she saw it, dancing on silver wings, just shy of where the Slytherin’s were sitting.

Ginny dove, egging her broom to go faster or that damn snitch was going to get away from her again. She gracefully ignored the cat-calls and snippets of ‘Weasley is our King’ coming from the Slytherins, to gather the tiny ball clean in her fist.

Then, as she was turning around to release the snitch for another round, she saw it. The platinum blond hair was what caught her eye first, and then it travelled to his arm, where he had raised his hand to scratch his nose. And on the stretch of skin where his sleeve had fallen back to his elbow, was The Dark Mark. Ginny felt sick as she took in the black, burnt talisman of a Death Eater’s loyalty to He-who-must-not-be-named, and the irritated red skin that it was embellished onto. It looked fresh, like it had just been inked mere days ago. Then Malfoy looked up to see Ginny staring, shell-shocked and he hastily shook his sleeve back down to cover his Mark. He didn’t need anyone close to the order dobbing him in to Dumbledore or the authorities.

As Ginny crawled into bed that night, all she could think about was Malfoy. She wasn’t going to report him, not yet anyway. “Tortured to Insanity,” she whispered to herself as she remembered what Neville had told her about what the Death Eaters had done to his family, and this was the last thought that crossed her mind as she surrendered to a dreamless slumber…
To Be Continued.
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