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What are you afraid of, at twelve years old?
Choose an image from your nightmares – any image, any one will do. Ink. Feathers. Snakes. Cold fingers on skin. Cold voice in the walls. Cold eyes on yours.
(Defeated by laughter, Professor Lupin says, but Tom was the only one laughing.
He liked it when you cried.)
They’re harmless, at first – the fears, that is.
Others’ fears. Not yours.
Bats. Broomsticks. Bees.
Being in the dark. Being airborne. Being stung.
But it’s almost your turn, and you know who’s coming – hot tears are threatening to overflow, and Professor Lupin is staring at you in alarm as if he’s just realized something very important, something very dire, and he’s starting to speak but it’s too late.
Tom is back. Tom is here. Tom is right in front of you – cold eyes cold voice cold fingers – and you’re frozen. Petrified.
“Ginevra.” Whispers all around you – curious, intrigued. Who is that? So dizzy you can barely stand, the floor falling through as if it’s been Transfigured into cracking ice. Your fingers curve around your wand like it’s a quill. Tom is watching closely, familiar lips curving upward in a slow, familiar smirk. “You missed me.”
Professor Lupin turns Tom into an orb, a shining white orb, and by the time you can breathe again, the lesson is over.
(You get full marks.)
“Who was he?” Professor Lupin asks later with useless, grating concern.
Your voice is as cold as Tom’s. “You know who he was.”
You Know Who.
What are you afraid of, at fourteen years old?
Grimmauld Place knows.
Grimmauld Place is a house accustomed to nightmares.
Past midnight – when the Order is gone, when your parents are asleep, when Walburga Black sits quietly behind drawn curtains – you leave sweat-tinged sheets and tear-stained pillows to wander narrow hallways, following a clatter from a distant, dusty chamber. The ancestral portraits and beheaded house elves observe, silent and impassive, as you open the rattling drawing room door.
Tom is waiting for you.
(He always is.)
Tom looks at you – at your wet cheeks, your nightgown, the hollow circles under your eyes – and understands.
(He always does.)
“I can’t sleep.” Your voice cracks on that word – sleep – as half-suppressed memories come rushing to the surface of your mind. All the nights he kept you tethered to your bed, unable to blink, unable to move except at his command – all the nights he took possession of your body while your mind lay silent, sleeping. You meet Tom’s eyes with effort. “It’s your fault.”
“Dear Tom,” says Tom, mocking. “No one’s ever understood me like you do.” He moves closer, reaching out as if to touch you, and you wonder what will happen if he does. Boggarts are incorporeal – but so is Tom. So is Tom, and look at what he’s done to you. “Dear Ginny,” he’s saying now, softer. “No one ever will.”
“Tom wouldn’t say that,” you hear yourself say sharply. Your voice sounds harsh and ragged to your ears. “He called me Ginevra. Tom wouldn’t call me Ginny.”
Tom blinks and steps backward, wearing an expression you’ve never seen him wear. Confusion. Uncertainty. Doubt.
Your own expression hardens. Your hand tightens on your wand.
“Goodbye, Tom.”
Riddikulus.
There are ink-soaked pages all around you, fluttering down and dissipating into smoke, and you’re laughing – delirious, hysterical laughter that dissolves as quickly as the paper.
You listen for the echo of Tom’s laugh – high, cold, cruel – but there’s only yours.
There’s only yours – and then, there’s only silence.
What are you afraid of, at sixteen years old?
“What are you afraid of, Ginny?”
They’re looking at you expectantly – Neville, Luna, and the others. The others you have to protect. The others you have to lead.
“Not much,” you say coolly, ignoring the pounding of your racing, beating heart.
“She means nothing,” Neville teases. “Ginny Weasley's not afraid of anything.” You think back to second year – a tall dark-haired boy with cold, cold eyes, standing in a classroom. Neville wasn’t there. Neville doesn’t know. Neville has Boggarts of his own to face and fight.
Luna squeezes your hand. “The Carrows have given us worse than Boggarts, and we’re not afraid,” she says quietly. “The Carrows should be afraid of us.”
You cheer along with everyone else at that, but you suspect you’re not the only one who doesn’t sleep that night, the night before this latest Carrow punishment. And the next day, all the cabinets are rattling, rattling as loud as your mind.
“Who’s Miss Weasley afraid of?” leers Amycus, grinning at Alecto pushing her forward, and you look at the Marks on their arms and think: You Know Who.
But it’s not Tom that’s waiting for you, not this time.
It’s an eleven-year-old girl clutching a worn black diary.
It’s you.
“Help me,” she whispers, ink-black tears streaming down her cheeks and bleeding into red, red hair. “Help me. Please.”
Slowly – steadily – you raise your wand.
Riddikulus.
You step directly through the puddle of ink as you leave the room, ignoring the confusion of your friends, ignoring the Carrows’ ringing laughter, ignoring the black footprints fading away behind you.
You don’t look back.