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Split-Half Reliability: Ch 1 [HP]
Title: Split-Half Reliability
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Ginny & Tom, Harry/Ginny, Tomarry
Rating: M
Chapter Word Count: 1,438
Chapter Count: 1 / 7
Summary: Prequel to Liminality. Ginny navigates life after her humiliating first year in Hogwarts. Along the way, she discovers that she’s much less alone than she thought she was, and she has to learn how to make peace with the teenaged, wannabe Dark Lord who's taken up a permanent residence in her head. -or- When Tom’s diary is destroyed, he’s already almost completely left it. With no place else to go, Tom Marvolo Riddle is thrown back into the only other container he has a link to: Ginny Weasley.
Notes: This thing.
---
Ginny remembers it.
"You were unconscious the whole time, Ginny," Ron scoffs, so Ginny stops insisting.
But she remembers it.
The Chamber was dark and cavernous, and there was the soft dripping noise of water leaking into puddles all around. The air was damp, and there was the smell of mould everywhere.
Harry was kneeling above a dark-robed body, filthy, his hair a wild mess. He was saying something, his tone increasingly desperate. Increasingly frightened.
Ginny wasn't frightened. Ginny was delighted.
Then, the massive snake. The phoenix, the Hat, the sword.
Ginny was laughing. She was stroking the holly wand—Harry Potter's wand, so curiously similar to her own. It felt illicit to be touching it. She wondered what she could do with it, how far she could push it.
Then, agony as the venom leaked through the pages of her diary. She felt herself flicker, her connection to the world snapped. A force was pulling at her. She struggled, but she couldn't stop it. It dragged her, and then she was gone.
She woke up in the hospital wing.
"Amazing that you've recovered so quickly," said Madame Pomphrey, eying the results of her diagnostic spells critically. "Your magical core was so drained that I'm amazed that you didn't—that you're—That is, it's simply splendid to see that you're doing so well, my dear. You're remarkably resilient."
Ginny smiled politely. She had come to the hospital wing earlier in the year to visit the petrified Hermione, but for some reason, she kept thinking that Hogwarts's mediwitch was supposed to be someone else, not Madame Pomphrey at all.
The occasional bouts of disorientation aside, Ginny came through a year of being possessed by Lord Voldemort with no worse damage than extreme humiliation, a complete lack of friends, and a slight queasiness around roosters.
Better than what she'd heard of Quirrel; though, in all fairness, the version of Voldemort who'd possessed him wasn't the cute teenaged boy with the diary. Probably, the two experiences couldn't be compared at all.
And so, she heads off to her second year of schooling with an incomplete memory of her first. As she looks for a compartment on the Hogwarts Express, she decides that the thing to do is make friends. The humiliation will pass as she demonstrates that she's above the teasing and sneering of what happened last year, and, well, she got rather good at avoiding roosters over the summer, so it's really the friendships that are the important issue. A part of her shivers with nerves at the thought. But, she reminds herself firmly, it's important to cultivate connections if she wants to get ahead in life, and she does, she absolutely does.
Girls are the easiest, she recalls vaguely. They always seem so flattered when she pays attention to them.
She finds a compartment of second-year Ravenclaw girls and flashes them her infamously charming smile. "Do you mind if I join you?" she asks.
The girls seem startled. "Come on in," one of them—Falvry, yes, that's her name, good family, too bad they're so stolidly neutral—says cautiously. "Weasley, right?"
Beside Falvry, Brigid O'Connor gives a nervous giggle. The other girls shush her.
"That's right," replies Ginny, smiling at everyone. "Please, call me Ginny."
Ginerva would be better—but no, everyone already knows that she goes by Ginny.
"Elvira," says Falvry.
"Brigid."
"Diana."
"Cigfa."
Ginny's attempts at friendly flirting do not go as she planned.
"Er, thank you," says Brigid. "Sorry, didn't you fancy Potter?"
Ginny's heart seems to stop, and when it restarts, it makes up for the lost time by going quadruple its normal speed. Yes. Yes. That's what this feeling is, this fascination and this lightheadedness and this need for his attention. She doesn't chastise herself for not noticing; after all, she's never fancied anyone before—she's fancied Harry since she first saw him at the barrier leading to Platform 9 ¾—so these feelings are completely new to her—so these feelings are so well-established that she almost forgets about them sometimes.
"Yes," she says to the compartment at large, powering through her flushed cheeks with all the Gryffindor—cunning—she has in her. "Sorry, I didn't mean—I was just being friendly."
The other girls exchange glances.
"Well," says Cigfa. "It is very obvious that you picked up your social skills from your older brothers."
The compartment bursts into giggles.
Ginny very carefully doesn't scowl. "To be clear, I was being completely genuine," she tells Brigid sweetly. "Just because I fancy Harry doesn't mean I've gone blind."
Brigid smiles at her, cheeks slightly pink. "Well, thank you." She pauses, then seems to make a decision and says wryly, "And I suppose it's not as startling as being told that I have the jawline of a blue-spotted mandible."
Diana sneers. "Luna Lovegood strikes again. I hope she wandered off into the woods somewhere over the summer and didn't come back out again."
"I'm not sure why someone like that would even bother coming to school," agrees Elvira. Her nose wrinkles delicately.
Cigfa sighs. "She's very distracting to those of us who want a normal education."
The girls all look at Ginny, waiting for her reaction.
Ginny thinks back to what she remembers of Lovegood. Not much. Long, tangled blond hair, absurd jewelry, absent eyes. A very convenient target. Nothing forges alliances like a common enemy.
"Luna…" she muses aloud. "Luna… Oh, you must mean Loony!" The girls burst into laughter. "Isn't that right?" asks Ginny innocently. "Loony Lovegood? I'm sure that was her name."
"That's perfect," gasps Brigid. "Oh, you're completely right, Ginny!"
"Loony Lovegood!" Elvira's dark eyes are glowing. "That's so perfect!"
Watching the girls, Ginny feels her stomach drop guiltily. Though she’d felt so easy a moment before, she suddenly can't help but feel ashamed at herself for dropping the strange blonde in front of the train like that.
"But actually," she says, a little abruptly. "I think she's hilarious. I mean, I do try not to spend more than a few minutes around her at a time…"
"Please, try sharing a dorm with her," says Diana. "She's just dreadful."
"Her and her ridiculous creatures, and those… those things she's always collecting and wearing!"
"Insect earrings, necklaces of dead grass…"
"What a nightmare!"
"Still," says Ginny blithely. "It's nice to have a few bonkers people running about. Otherwise, how am I supposed to entertain myself this year, now that I'm no longer possessed by a cursed diary?"
The invisible dragon in the room thus having been addressed, the girls burst into questions, and Ginny is happy to answer them. She even volunteers a few truths in her carefully constructed story. A diary, a dark, magical diary of some student—unnamed—from half a century ago. Missing memories, fever dreams. The Chamber of Secrets. Dashing, brave Harry Potter rescuing her.
Goal achieved, she thinks to herself smugly.
A few dementors later, the Express pulls into Hogsmeade station, and Ginny separates from the Ravenclaw girls, promising to meet up with them again soon.
She makes her way to the horseless carriages and runs straight into Luna Lovegood.
Ginny feels herself flush with shame. "We were talking about you on the train," she blurts out. "Not very—not kind things. I called you Loony Lovegood, and I think I started a thing. Sorry. I'm sorry."
Luna stares up at her with huge, unblinking eyes. "'Loony,'" she repeats. Her voice is high and sweet. "That's rather clever."
"Would you like to sit together in one of the carriages?" Ginny asks, feeling desperately awkward.
"Alright," says Luna merrily. She takes Ginny's hand in hers. "Do you read the Quibbler?"
"I don't think I have, no," Ginny admits as they walk to a carriage together. She catches sight of Elvira, Brigid, Diana, and Cigfa making their way to their own carriage. Diana mouths "Good luck" at her, and points to Luna meaningfully. Ginny smiles back weakly.
"It has a lot to say about what happened at the school last year," says Luna brightly. "I'll explain it to you."
And then Ginny hears her own story told in the most wildly inaccurate way possible. A part of her wants to sneer, but she pushes that urge down and simply lets herself be entertained.
"That's not at all how I remember it happening," she tells Luna. "But I think I like your version better."
Luna smiles at her. "I do, too."
Ginny never grows as close to Elvira and the others as she has planned, but she keeps up with them and meets them to study regularly.
And, somehow, she also stays friendly with Luna. They greet each other pleasantly in the hall, they occasionally sit beside one another in lessons, and Ginny even spends the rare Sunday afternoon with Luna hunting in the tall grasses behind Hagrid's hut for Miniature Sundrop Mammoths.
All in all, not too bad.
It’s a good year.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Ginny & Tom, Harry/Ginny, Tomarry
Rating: M
Chapter Word Count: 1,438
Chapter Count: 1 / 7
Summary: Prequel to Liminality. Ginny navigates life after her humiliating first year in Hogwarts. Along the way, she discovers that she’s much less alone than she thought she was, and she has to learn how to make peace with the teenaged, wannabe Dark Lord who's taken up a permanent residence in her head. -or- When Tom’s diary is destroyed, he’s already almost completely left it. With no place else to go, Tom Marvolo Riddle is thrown back into the only other container he has a link to: Ginny Weasley.
Notes: This thing.
Ginny remembers it.
"You were unconscious the whole time, Ginny," Ron scoffs, so Ginny stops insisting.
But she remembers it.
The Chamber was dark and cavernous, and there was the soft dripping noise of water leaking into puddles all around. The air was damp, and there was the smell of mould everywhere.
Harry was kneeling above a dark-robed body, filthy, his hair a wild mess. He was saying something, his tone increasingly desperate. Increasingly frightened.
Ginny wasn't frightened. Ginny was delighted.
Then, the massive snake. The phoenix, the Hat, the sword.
Ginny was laughing. She was stroking the holly wand—Harry Potter's wand, so curiously similar to her own. It felt illicit to be touching it. She wondered what she could do with it, how far she could push it.
Then, agony as the venom leaked through the pages of her diary. She felt herself flicker, her connection to the world snapped. A force was pulling at her. She struggled, but she couldn't stop it. It dragged her, and then she was gone.
She woke up in the hospital wing.
"Amazing that you've recovered so quickly," said Madame Pomphrey, eying the results of her diagnostic spells critically. "Your magical core was so drained that I'm amazed that you didn't—that you're—That is, it's simply splendid to see that you're doing so well, my dear. You're remarkably resilient."
Ginny smiled politely. She had come to the hospital wing earlier in the year to visit the petrified Hermione, but for some reason, she kept thinking that Hogwarts's mediwitch was supposed to be someone else, not Madame Pomphrey at all.
The occasional bouts of disorientation aside, Ginny came through a year of being possessed by Lord Voldemort with no worse damage than extreme humiliation, a complete lack of friends, and a slight queasiness around roosters.
Better than what she'd heard of Quirrel; though, in all fairness, the version of Voldemort who'd possessed him wasn't the cute teenaged boy with the diary. Probably, the two experiences couldn't be compared at all.
And so, she heads off to her second year of schooling with an incomplete memory of her first. As she looks for a compartment on the Hogwarts Express, she decides that the thing to do is make friends. The humiliation will pass as she demonstrates that she's above the teasing and sneering of what happened last year, and, well, she got rather good at avoiding roosters over the summer, so it's really the friendships that are the important issue. A part of her shivers with nerves at the thought. But, she reminds herself firmly, it's important to cultivate connections if she wants to get ahead in life, and she does, she absolutely does.
Girls are the easiest, she recalls vaguely. They always seem so flattered when she pays attention to them.
She finds a compartment of second-year Ravenclaw girls and flashes them her infamously charming smile. "Do you mind if I join you?" she asks.
The girls seem startled. "Come on in," one of them—Falvry, yes, that's her name, good family, too bad they're so stolidly neutral—says cautiously. "Weasley, right?"
Beside Falvry, Brigid O'Connor gives a nervous giggle. The other girls shush her.
"That's right," replies Ginny, smiling at everyone. "Please, call me Ginny."
Ginerva would be better—but no, everyone already knows that she goes by Ginny.
"Elvira," says Falvry.
"Brigid."
"Diana."
"Cigfa."
Ginny's attempts at friendly flirting do not go as she planned.
"Er, thank you," says Brigid. "Sorry, didn't you fancy Potter?"
Ginny's heart seems to stop, and when it restarts, it makes up for the lost time by going quadruple its normal speed. Yes. Yes. That's what this feeling is, this fascination and this lightheadedness and this need for his attention. She doesn't chastise herself for not noticing; after all, she's never fancied anyone before—she's fancied Harry since she first saw him at the barrier leading to Platform 9 ¾—so these feelings are completely new to her—so these feelings are so well-established that she almost forgets about them sometimes.
"Yes," she says to the compartment at large, powering through her flushed cheeks with all the Gryffindor—cunning—she has in her. "Sorry, I didn't mean—I was just being friendly."
The other girls exchange glances.
"Well," says Cigfa. "It is very obvious that you picked up your social skills from your older brothers."
The compartment bursts into giggles.
Ginny very carefully doesn't scowl. "To be clear, I was being completely genuine," she tells Brigid sweetly. "Just because I fancy Harry doesn't mean I've gone blind."
Brigid smiles at her, cheeks slightly pink. "Well, thank you." She pauses, then seems to make a decision and says wryly, "And I suppose it's not as startling as being told that I have the jawline of a blue-spotted mandible."
Diana sneers. "Luna Lovegood strikes again. I hope she wandered off into the woods somewhere over the summer and didn't come back out again."
"I'm not sure why someone like that would even bother coming to school," agrees Elvira. Her nose wrinkles delicately.
Cigfa sighs. "She's very distracting to those of us who want a normal education."
The girls all look at Ginny, waiting for her reaction.
Ginny thinks back to what she remembers of Lovegood. Not much. Long, tangled blond hair, absurd jewelry, absent eyes. A very convenient target. Nothing forges alliances like a common enemy.
"Luna…" she muses aloud. "Luna… Oh, you must mean Loony!" The girls burst into laughter. "Isn't that right?" asks Ginny innocently. "Loony Lovegood? I'm sure that was her name."
"That's perfect," gasps Brigid. "Oh, you're completely right, Ginny!"
"Loony Lovegood!" Elvira's dark eyes are glowing. "That's so perfect!"
Watching the girls, Ginny feels her stomach drop guiltily. Though she’d felt so easy a moment before, she suddenly can't help but feel ashamed at herself for dropping the strange blonde in front of the train like that.
"But actually," she says, a little abruptly. "I think she's hilarious. I mean, I do try not to spend more than a few minutes around her at a time…"
"Please, try sharing a dorm with her," says Diana. "She's just dreadful."
"Her and her ridiculous creatures, and those… those things she's always collecting and wearing!"
"Insect earrings, necklaces of dead grass…"
"What a nightmare!"
"Still," says Ginny blithely. "It's nice to have a few bonkers people running about. Otherwise, how am I supposed to entertain myself this year, now that I'm no longer possessed by a cursed diary?"
The invisible dragon in the room thus having been addressed, the girls burst into questions, and Ginny is happy to answer them. She even volunteers a few truths in her carefully constructed story. A diary, a dark, magical diary of some student—unnamed—from half a century ago. Missing memories, fever dreams. The Chamber of Secrets. Dashing, brave Harry Potter rescuing her.
Goal achieved, she thinks to herself smugly.
A few dementors later, the Express pulls into Hogsmeade station, and Ginny separates from the Ravenclaw girls, promising to meet up with them again soon.
She makes her way to the horseless carriages and runs straight into Luna Lovegood.
Ginny feels herself flush with shame. "We were talking about you on the train," she blurts out. "Not very—not kind things. I called you Loony Lovegood, and I think I started a thing. Sorry. I'm sorry."
Luna stares up at her with huge, unblinking eyes. "'Loony,'" she repeats. Her voice is high and sweet. "That's rather clever."
"Would you like to sit together in one of the carriages?" Ginny asks, feeling desperately awkward.
"Alright," says Luna merrily. She takes Ginny's hand in hers. "Do you read the Quibbler?"
"I don't think I have, no," Ginny admits as they walk to a carriage together. She catches sight of Elvira, Brigid, Diana, and Cigfa making their way to their own carriage. Diana mouths "Good luck" at her, and points to Luna meaningfully. Ginny smiles back weakly.
"It has a lot to say about what happened at the school last year," says Luna brightly. "I'll explain it to you."
And then Ginny hears her own story told in the most wildly inaccurate way possible. A part of her wants to sneer, but she pushes that urge down and simply lets herself be entertained.
"That's not at all how I remember it happening," she tells Luna. "But I think I like your version better."
Luna smiles at her. "I do, too."
Ginny never grows as close to Elvira and the others as she has planned, but she keeps up with them and meets them to study regularly.
And, somehow, she also stays friendly with Luna. They greet each other pleasantly in the hall, they occasionally sit beside one another in lessons, and Ginny even spends the rare Sunday afternoon with Luna hunting in the tall grasses behind Hagrid's hut for Miniature Sundrop Mammoths.
All in all, not too bad.
It’s a good year.