Some Will Seek Forgiveness

A/N: This fic has been developing in my head for a long time now, but I was inspired to write it by another Ginny/Slytherin fic, The Unforgettable Fire, by TheLabris. The idea of having it as a diary/flashback fic was inspired by that fic, too. Please R&R!

Here's my kiss to betray (Kiss to betray)
Desperate to brush the lips of grace (Brush the lips of grace)
Do you feel hollow when you think of how I lied?

Some Will Seek Forgiveness, Others Escape - UnderOath

I was numb.

I was totally devoid of any emotions. But that worked, I guess, for what I was, I mean.

I was a Slytherin.

I just stood there, staring out at everyone. Do you know how intimidating that is, having every single student and teacher at Hogwarts just stare at you? I didn't think so. I just stood there on the stage until McGonagall pushed my slightly, and told me to go and sit at my table. She spat the words "your table", as if sitting at the Slytherin table was something worthy to be sentenced to a lifetime at Azkaban for, which, in my opinion, it was. When you grow up with a whole family of Gryffindors, and then get put into Slytherin, that happens to you. It disgusted me. I tried as best I could to walk to the table and not puke on the way. Or worse, cry.

I was the misfit – the oddball if you will. But when I actually sat at the table and thought about it, Slytherin was the only place that I really fit. I was smart, smarter then any Ravenclaw, perhaps, but I would not be welcomed there. They would have been jealous, and shunned me. I was not loyal enough to be in Hufflepuff, and was more likely to run off with whatever would save me. Well, I was at that point in time, anyhow. And, most unfortunately (for my parents, not me) I was definitely not Gryffindor material. I was the misbehaver in the family, more so than Fred or George, even, and if you were in Gryffindor, you couldn't do anything wrong, you had to be good. The snake that was coiled in the bottom of my stomach was unfurling, getting ready to strike at the opportune moment.

I was the only one sorted into Slytherin that year, and I was outraged at my parents' reaction. "Ginny, dear, don't worry, Ron told us. We don't care that you were sorted into Slytherin, we know you, and you are a Gryffindor at heart…" and it went on and on in the same fashion. I cut that part of the letter out, and charmed it onto my reply, which consisted simply of "I guess you don't know me all that well then." It broke my mother's heart, and I didn't receive another letter from her during all my first year, except at Christmas, though I did not receive as extravagant a present as I usually did.

I was eleven years old, a Slytherin of two days, and I was already turning into a cold-hearted bitch. Draco Malfoy was proud of me. He came into my room that night for some reason. I remember it very clearly though…

She was sitting on her bed crying. Her vanity mirror was broken from the Transfiguration textbook she had thrown at it in a fit of rage. She heard nothing as the door creaked open, her wracking sobs drowning out the sound of his footsteps. She moved her hair so it shielded her bloodshot eyes. "What do you want, Malfoy?" She spat the last word as though it was a foul curse word leaving her tongue.

"Why, to have my way with you, of course." He drawled sarcastically, a cold, malicious glint in his eyes, making it seem as though that was what he had intended to do, indeed.

"Well, you might as well get on it then, you wouldn't want people knowing you'd been defiled by a Weasley now, would you? Bloody fucking pure-bloods."

"Oh, very nice, Weasley, I wouldn't have expected such a reaction. You really are turning into a feisty little bitch, aren't you? Welcome to Slyth--"

He reeled backwards, the tender flesh of his cheek already taking on a pinkish tinge where she had slapped him. He had known she would. Hell, he had provoked her even. He just hadn't expected her to be so damn strong.

"You would have done well in Slytherin. If you weren't a Weasley, that is. Rude little bitch." He drawled, attempting a smirk but failing, the pain in his cheek taking the better of him.

"Get the hell OUT OF MY ROOM!" she screamed at him, and he ran.

What, you didn't get the part where he was proud of me? For the love of fake-wands, do I have to explain everything to you? OK, you know the part where he said, "You would have done well in Slytherin"? There, it's right there! That is the biggest compliment that a Slytherin knows how to give to someone, especially someone from a family of Gryffindors, especially a Weasley.

He came the next night too. And the next, and every night after that, too. We always had the same "conversation", but changed. His insults were less and less fierce, and I was less inclined to speak the words I always had, and was less rude to him each time he came. We actually had a real conversation once. Almost.

"Why do you do it?" she asked him.

He jumped, startled. He hadn't heard her come into the common room. He looked around, they were totally alone.

"Why do I do what?" he questioned.

"Why do you come into my room every night? I know you don't do it because you want to. So why?"

At this, she saw a spark flare to life in his eyes. Ah, she thought, so I am more than just a bunch of red hair to him.

"How they hell do you know I don't come because I want to?" she was slightly startled by his reaction, and saw him visible calm himself before continuing on with his answer.

"I come because I think you need someone to talk to. I don't want you to be upset, why I'm not quite sure, but I don't think that it is healthy for a little girl to be on her own with no one to talk to.

I do have someone to talk to, she thought, you just don't know him. She was thinking of Tom. He was her diary.

OK, let my just take a moment to explain who exactly "Tom" was. It was a diary I had found in my trunk. It wasn't my diary, my diary had Mrs Harry Potter scribbled across the front and crossed out. I figured my parents had bought me a going away present.

I had started to tell it everything, telling how I, Ginvevra Anne Weasley, was falling in like (not love) with Draco Malfoy, the forbidden treasure. At least, that was how I saw it.

When the ink disappeared, I didn't even realize that something might have been wrong. I just thought that it was like a pensive, and that you could call the entries back at will, when or if you wanted to read them again was your choice.

When Tom started to write back, I totally freaked. He was comforting, though, like the friend I had never found. He told me that I was insane for thinking that I wasn't going to make it in Slytherin just because I came from a family of Gryffindor blood traitors. He convinced me that, just because my parents were blood traitors, that didn't make me one by proxy.

Anyway, on with the flashback!

She looked up at him, defiance in her eyes.

"I like not having room mates. It means I can decorate however I like." This made him chuckle.

"You certainly make for more interesting company than Crabbe and Goyle, those pathetic excuses for humans couldn't recognize a joke if it danced naked in front of them. You're a right site prettier, too."

She blushed the famous Weasley blush (which was almost as famous as the Weasley hair and temper).

"I don't know whether to be offended, that I am merely more interesting than gorillas, or to be complimented that you called me pretty. Which I'm not, by the way."

"And why would you think that?"

"Well, as you will have noticed, I'm flatter than you are, my hair is way too thick and unruly, my skin is too pale, I have too many freckles, and, oh yeah, it looks like some one lit a match on top of my head!"

She said this all in one sentence, and it may well have been the longest sentence ever said in the Slytherin common room, or perhaps in all of Hogwarts.

He looked her over a few times and thought carefully before he replied.

"You are pretty. Don't interrupt!" he said quickly, because her mouth was open as if she was ready to do just that. "As I was saying. You are pretty. You are flat now, yes, but you'll fill out soon enough. You hair is thick, but it is beautiful, and is the perfect shade of copper. Yes, your skin is pale, and yes, you have freckles, but your skin has a healthy glow. And did no one ever tell you that freckles are a sign of beauty?" He blushed suddenly, apparently aware of what he had just said.

She looked at him for a moment, a small smile breaking out on her face. It was the first true smile that had beaten down the boundaries since she had been sorted into Slytherin, and then replied,

"You don often hear that freckles are beautiful around Weasleys. All the men would think you were calling them poofs!" She giggled nervously, then let it break out into full blown laughter, which quickly turned itself into crying.

She was letting out all of the tears she had repressed since the first day, and she could do nothing about the flow. She couldn't stop it, or delay it. She turned, and ran up the stairs to her room, and flopped down on the bed, too late to save her pride.

She hadn't expected a Slytherin to be the one who made her believe she was beautiful. Tom certainly never had.

That was when I tried to get rid of him. No, not him being Draco, him being Tom. I threw the diary down Moaning Myrtle's toilet, and flushed, hoping it would be taken to the bottom of the Great Lake.

How surprised I was when it turned out Draco had been right! By Christmas time, I had filled out considerably, resorting to stealing Parkinson's bras until I could have my mother send me my own. I only used them after a deep scouring charm, obviously.

My mother was furious when it she found out I had bought bras with what was supposed to be money for a gift for myself. I had bought them in hopes I would be needing them when school started up. Which I hadn't. She sent them without too much fuss (well, without a Howler, at least).

Unfortunately, when I had finally managed to rid myself of almost all memories of Tom, I heard my brother (the obnoxious one, Ron), his "friend" (whom he had a huge crush on, which was obvious to everyone except him, Hermione) and his other best friend (the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry Potter) talking about the diary at breakfast one morning. I panicked. What if Tom spilled my secrets about being in like (not love) with Draco? About how I wished I would fill my skin?

I had no other option. I had to get that diary back. I needed something. I needed the perfect plan.

She had borrowed Draco's invisibility cloak, and cast a disillusionment charm on herself for good measure. There was no way she would be seen. She waited at the top of the marble staircase that led into the Entrance Hall, up from the dungeons.

She was waiting for the perfect victim. And there he was. He was only a first year, like herself. He was the one who always carried the camera around, hoping to get a picture with the "Boy Wonder" -- Creevey. She followed him up the seven flights of stairs (which was no mean feat when one is under an invisibility cloak) and to the portrait of the lady in the hideous pink dress, which was far too tight. She heard him mumble a password, and she slipped in behind him.

She ran up the stairs to the second year boys dorm, and began tearing the drawers out of the dresser, scattering the content of his backpack, and ripping open his bed clothes.

She finally found the diary at the bottom of his trunk. She clutched it to her chest, and strode proudly out of the room, like a seeker that had just made the most difficult catch in history. As she passed her brothers bed, she made sure to spit on it for good measure.

She passed her brother and the rest of the Golden Trio as she made her way back to the Slytherin common room, being led back to the dormitories by that dunderhead, Longbottom. He should have been a squib even he knew what was good for him, she thought savagely.

It scared her that, even in her thoughts, she was sounding more and more like a Slytherin everyday.

Not much else worth recording happened that year. Who am I kidding! TONS of stuff happened!

Ginny had gone to bed later than usual that night. Draco, however, was perfectly on time, as usual. He waltzed into her room just as she was taking off her shirt to change into her pajamas. She was so used to the sound of him coming in that she didn't pay any attention to it, as if it wasn't there. Just as she reached around to unclasp her bra, he spoke, and thus alerted her to his presence.

"My, my, my. This is my first prediction to ever come true! You did fill out!"

She screamed and threw her shirt at his head, and he didn't stop laughing till she screeched,

"How much did you see!" She was red faced and furious now.

"Enough to give you a warning. Keep your black robes on at all times. They are loose, right?" He raised an eyebrow as she gave up trying to cover herself with her school skirt.

"Yes, but I don't understand why."

"Look at it this way: how many of the boys in Slytherin would you ever go out with?"

She looked embarrassed, but answered, "one."

Draco looked surprised. "Who?"

She now bore an expression of complete amazement. "I'll be damned if I tell you who it is. You wouldn't stop talking about it for years! But continue on with your lesson."

"Oh, um, right," he stumbled over his words as he tried to stop thinking about who this mystery man could be. "Well, the Slytherins don't have the best reputation, right?"

She murmured a reply as she pulled her pajama top over her head.

"Well, put it this way. I don't mean to sound crude, but if they saw your goods, they would never leave you alone. They would pressure you. I do not want that happening to the only pretty looking eleven year old in Hogwarts."

She mumbled something indistinct. He raised his eyebrow in question.

"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that."

"I said I'm twelve. My birthday was September 4, and you have to be at least eleven to come to Hogwarts. I was eleven here for a grand total of three days."

Draco was shocked. Merlin, she was only 12 days younger than him. This was strange.

Her eyes welled with tears as she processed what he was saying. The tears quickly vanished, however, and her voice took on a steely edge.

"Teach me the Bat-Bogey Hex. NOW!"

Four hours and thirty minutes later, Ginny had successfully managed to attach great flapping bogeys to Malfoy's face five times.

"Congratulations are in order, I believe, Miss Weasley – "

"Ginny." She corrected.

"Fine, Ginny then. You have mastered the art of the Bat-Bogey Hex. Well done!"

OK, so maybe it doesn't seem like tons of stuff, but trust me, when you are twelve, that is a hell of a lot of stuff. The next big thing was the Chamber. I don't remember detail, but you can hear what I know.

Ginny lost her innocence the day she was snatched into the Chamber, but retained it in all the most important ways. She was possessed and taken down through a sink, of all things. And in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. She spoke in a language she had never heard before but was sure she could speak. She remembered being beaten, emotionally and physically, by Tom, before being left for dead on the cold, hard, slimy floor.

She remembered waking in Harry's arms, next to the corpse of a sixty foot long snake. She remembered garbling a load of nonsense about something, and then breaking down outright and crying. She remembered seeing her parents disappointed faces and not caring. The thing that stood out most prominently in her memory was Draco holding her as she cried herself to sleep.

Draco holding me as I cried seemed to make it all better. I learned later that Tom was gone, that Harry had killed him, and destroyed the diary. I also began to feel that I was moving from having fallen in like with Draco, and that it was evolving into love.

I left Hogwarts for the summer intending to write Draco every week. I was devastated when he told me he was leaving to go to Spain for the summer, and had no address. I left Hogwarts for the summer feeling totally heart-broken. I knew though, that the first thing I was going to do was go out and buy myself a nice, muggle diary.