The Coldest Summer Day

It was two weeks after Harry Potter had managed to slay a basilisk and drive a reincarnation of the most feared Dark Lord in History out of Ginerva Weasley's body. The sun was shining, the student's had no homework because they were heading home the next day and it seemed as though all of Hogwarts was taking advantage of the glorious weather by heading out doors.

From her lonely vantage point from the Astronomy tower Ginny could see children laughing, the pick- up games of Quidditch, Dumbledore having a picnic with Professor Sprout, Professor McGonagall sitting on a tartan rug reading Transfiguration Weekly and Professor Snape sitting perched on a director's chair marking essay's underneath the shade of the Weeping Willow. Staff and Students alike were exuberantly celebrating the awakening of the petrified students, the return of Dumbledore, the end of the Terror.

Dumbledore had not disclosed to the school at large what had actually happened down in the Chamber of Secrets. Instead he had simply said that Harry and Ron had killed the monster that had been petrifying students, whilst rescuing Ginny. It had led to most of Gryffindor hounding Ron and Harry for more details. Harry's Fan Club had swelled to even more epic proportions, as giggling school girls sought to express their admiration of their Hero who had saved the day once again in the only way they knew how.

As usual Ginny was ignored. Her brother's had their own lives and weren't interested in making sure that the baby of the family was alright. They'd turned up at the infirmary the day after Tom had left her body, looking very contrite and expressing feelings of guilt and sorrow that they hadn't realised what was going on. Looking back, Ginny realised how naive she had been to have actually believed them. The air around her began to heat up as she thought about it.

She'd just been released from the infirmary and she'd run into Percy on her way back to Gryffindor tower.

"Percy..."

"Not now Ginny...I'm off to do some tutoring for some third year students that are getting behind in history of magic" came the brisk shake off.

"But..."

"Come and find me later" he called over his shoulder as he ran down a flight of stairs.

She had been left to walk into the Tower on her own, to feel the gaze of everyone's eyes upon her as they judged her. The silence that had fallen had felt like it lasted for eternity, but had actually only lasted for a few seconds. Then as one the House seemed to dismiss her and turned back to their infinitely more interesting gossip. It seemed as though being a victim of the Heir of Slytherin was old news by now.

Ron had been sitting in an armchair by the fire, obviously waiting for the other members of the trio to come down and join him in the Common Room. Ginny had tentatively gone to sit beside him.

"Hey..."

The look that Ron sent her could best be described as pure horror. "Look Ginny...don't take this the wrong way or anything...But you're not going to hang round us all the time, are you? I mean it's really not cool for a bloke to have his little sister hanging round with him and his friends all the time right? Can't you go and sit with your friends?"

Salvaging what little remnants she had left of her pride, Ginny had numbly nodded and slowly walked up to her dorm.

A more honest answer was that Ginny didn't have any friends. The powers that be, led by Romilda Vance, had decided in the first week that Ginny was "weird and uncool". The other four girls in her dorm had followed like sheep. As a result her dorm mates treated her like a Pariah and had sent her to a weird form of Coventry. They were not openly mean or insulting. They just ignored her. Conversations ceased when she walked into the room, any time she tried to contribute to a conversation her only response was a flat silence, followed by a blank 'why the Hell are you talking to me?' stare. The girls found more subtle ways to exclude Ginny; one day they all woke up wearing identical friendship bracelets, the next day they decided to start a new fashion by wearing their socks differently. Little things, but things that were designed to show her what an outsider she was.

The Gryffindor boy's were at an age where girls were foreign entities best ignored for the next couple of years. To make things even worse Ginny's year had taken House divisions and rivalries to a whole new level. As a consequence there were no interactions between the Houses unless a teacher expressly forced people to work together. People ignored their year mates from other Houses in the corridors and in the Library. Inter-House cooperation was at an all-time low.

And of course being possessed by an insane, sixteen year-old reincarnation of Lord Voldermort had not helped Ginny in the friend making department.

The air in the astronomy tower was now heading towards being boiling, a fact that Ginny became alerted to when the sweat came dripping down from her hair into her eyes. She forced herself to calm down by thinking of the Twins. Fred and George had been fantastic since she had been released from the infirmary. They appeared to have made it their life's mission to make her laugh. Whether it was telling her the newest joke..."what do a kneazle, squib and elf have in common?" or pranking Romilda Vance the twins always seemed to be good for a laugh. The air had cooled dramatically and Ginny was left with a faint smile on her face.

The smile died abruptly when her thoughts suddenly turned to her parent's reactions to her possession. The expressions of shame that her parents wore whenever they know looked at their youngest daughter had haunted Ginny for weeks. Her father had spent the four days she had been in the Hospital Wing lecturing her about how one "Must never trust any magical object that can think for itself". Her mother had barely looked at her the whole time. It didn't seem to matter how many times Dumbledore told Molly and Arthur that it wasn't her fault, that older and wiser wizards had been tricked by You-Know-Who, that he had checked thoroughly and no trace of possession remained. The elder two Weasley's were still wary of their youngest daughter.

She already knew just how stupid she'd been. How she could have killed somebody, how she could have killed Ron. How one of the most evil, vilest people on the planet had possessed her and forced her to do evil, vile things. How she hadn't been strong enough, hadn't tried hard enough to stop Him. How she hadn't done the smart thing and gone and told a teacher when she started losing large chunks of each day. She had been violated in the worst possible way. The one person who she had trusted, confided in had betrayed her. Had mind-raped her, possessed her. Her parents seemed to think that she needed to be reminded of those facts daily. They didn't seem to understand that every waking moment, every dream-like nightmare reminded her of those Hellish nine months.

Thinking of her parents made the ground several hundred feet below look extremely tempting. She subconsciously started to sing the old nursery rhyme "nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I may as well eat worms..." as she stood up.

"Nobody likes me..." the latch of the ancient bay window was extremely stiff but eventually creaked enough to wake the dead and opened "everybody hates me..." clambering up the window was surprisingly easy.

Sitting, leaning out of the window gave Ginny a sense of inner-peace that she had not felt for a long time. She began the final chant of the refrain "I may as well..." In the distance the pick-up game of Quidditch had finished with the capturing of the snitch. The Huge crowd was expressing their roar of approval.

The cheers jolted Ginny back to reality. They made her think about how Bill and Fred and George would feel if she died. How if she died Tom would have won. How such a death was a coward's way out. How she didn't want to be a coward.

She was however still in quite an awkward position. She was hanging out of a raised window, legs dangling down into oblivion. The window was too narrow to allow for her to turn round. The only way to get into the Tower was to literally tumble backwards.

A few minutes later, a very bruised and battered, Ginny Weasley sat up grimacing from pain.

Looking around at the deserted Tower, she wisely decided to leave the place that had once been one of her favourite refuges and would now forever be in her mind a place of sinful weakness and temptation. Wandering down the eight hundred and sixty-seven steps that connected the Astronomy Tower to the rest of the Castle gave Ginny plenty of time to think about where she could go next.

She didn't have the strength or mental fortitude to face the Tower of Horrors that was more commonly known as the Gryffindor Common Room. Anywhere where plenty of people were likely to be congregating was out of the question. Inspiration struck when she reached the five hundredth and fifty-ninth step. The library the night before Summer Break was going to be deserted. Not even Hermione Granger or the most studious Ravenclaw could be bothered to be studying.

Hogwarts library was a glorious place to get lost in. As such it provided a much needed refuge for Hogwarts' social outcasts, of which Ginny was definitely one. Madam Prince banned talking and ruled the room with an iron grip. Musty shelves and ancient tables provided nooks and crannies in out of the way places where no one could find you. It was the type of place that the Romilda Vance's of the world only entered under extreme duress.

The thought of going to the library and finding a spot where she could be alone lifted Ginny's spirits enough that she dragged her aching body down the necessary twenty-six corridors and five staircases that was the most direct route to the library.

When she finally reached the library, she headed straight to the History of Magic Section, wandered through the maze of books and finally sat at the table where the books in the surrounding shelves expounded in great length on the subject of 'Centaur taxation in the eighth century'. The books themselves looked as though they hadn't been touched in centuries. It was a glacially quite section of the library, where nobody ever came and where she was unlikely to be disturbed.

Knowing all of this she allowed her racing mind to settle and begun to sob.

Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how one looked at it the only other person in the library that night happened to be sitting a mere two bookcases away. Upon hearing the heart-rending sobs his first instinct was to turn around and flee. But he had been raised to take duty and honour very seriously indeed. And fleeing away from a damsel in distress under no circumstances could be described as honourable.

Suppressing a sigh, he headed in the direction of the sobs. Walking round a particularly tall bookcase he turned a corner and looked at the pitifully small red-haired girl who was crying as though her heart had broken. If the girl had been one of the upper years he would have tactfully bowed out and beat a hasty retreat. But there was no question that the girl was around his own age. And that left him to do...something.

He decided that he needed to make his presence known. He gently cleared his throat.

Ginny was so startled that her sobs were instantaneously reduced to sniffles. The befuddled surprise swiftly turned to outrage. How dare the dark-haired stranger with the green tie invade her privacy, not tactfully turn around and go away when he heard her cry, come to mock her when she was at her must vulnerable.

The wrath faded when she noticed that the boy was offering her an immaculately ironed, crisp white handkerchief. She took it silently amazed that there was someone in the labyrinth that was Hogwarts that still cared when they saw another human being in distress. The boy took a seat next to her and gave her a moment to compose herself.

It took a while but she finally managed to stop sniffling and hiccupping. She felt completely and utterly drained and wretched. The boy smiled at her, drew his wand and gently cast a pick me up charm on her. The charm had the effect of washing and drying her face, leaving her instantly feeling a tiny bit better.

"You know sometimes it can help to tell somebody what's bothering you" the boy said with an encouraging smile.

She looked at him somewhat doubtfully. Her parents had trained her from earliest childhood not to trust Slytherin's, and there was no doubt that the boy sitting in front of her was a Slytherin. But there was also no doubt that he was the first person in the four walls of the Castle that had been nice to her in nine months. And she hungered for human companionship, for someone to talk to, for someone to laugh with. She desperately needed somebody to draw her out of the nightmarish exile that she was currently in. And he was the only person that had ever even begun to make an effort to draw her out of her shell.

Noticing the turmoil flittering across her face he decided to take pity on her.

"I know that was somewhat presumptuous of me, wasn't it? Let's start with something easier. Because sometimes it can help to have hideously charming young men distract stunningly beautiful young ladies from their troubles" he flashed her a dazzling smile.

"My name's Blaise. Blaise Zabini. I'm a second year, soon to be third year Slytherin. How bout you?"

Despite herself she laughed. "Ginny. Ginny Weasley. First year, soon to be second year. Social outcast of Gryffindor."

He smiles thinking that he's gotten to the route of her distress and is slightly relieved that it's not something more serious.

She notices his smile, correctly guesses the reason behind it, and decides to ask some probing questions of her own.

"So we both know the reason I'm here in the library the night before Summer holidays. What's your excuse?"

"I needed to get away from my housemates. They can be...trying at times" came the smooth answer.

"So are we to be outcasts together?" she smiled at him somewhat hopefully.

"I'm not sure whether outcast would be the best word to describe me. More like hounded, cornered potential ally. But I would like to make a friend at this school...if you would be willing?"

The radiant smile that she gave him was confirmation enough. They spent a pleasant couple of hours talking about The Weird Sister's, her mum's obsession with Celestina Warbeck, Quidditch, Professors, life. The conversation only ended when the bell tolled signalling to students that they had fifteen minutes till curfew.

As neither wanted to be locked into the library for the holidays, they regretfully stood to leave.

Ginny stood there, unable to express the gratitude she felt.

He smiled at her and gently answered the question that she was too afraid to ask. "Would you mind if I owled you over the Summer? "

"I'd like it if you did. The only thing is that we only have one owl and its ancient and..."

He cut her off saying "I'll make sure Andre waits for a return letter. Till September"

"Till September".

She went to bed smiling for the first time since she arrived at Hogwarts. Things were looking up.

A/N

I've always loved Ginny's character but thought that the way Rowling didn't mention in her recovery in book 3 left a bit of a hole. You don't get possessed by pure evil and not suffer some consequences. This is my version of what might have happened (only a bit AU with Blaise/Ginny)