'The nice thing about Black being dead is that there are no dementors on the Hogwarts Express,' Ginny thought, looking out of the window.
She had found a nice, empty compartment with Daisy, Emily and Mira - without Lupin. Thank Merlin… wait, did she just thank Merlin? Stupid wizard proverbs infecting her.
The boys had tried to 'invade' their compartment, but Ginny - with much secret glee - had thrown them out when they became annoying and had declared this compartment forbidden to all boys.
It had started with Alaric and Charlie coming by, trying to talk to Ginny while completely ignoring the other three girls, much to the annoyance of Mira and Emily - for different reasons.
Mira had been annoyed with the boys for trying to flirt with Ginny, while Emily was jealous of Ginny for being the centre of attention, especially Alaric's. Ginny still remembered Emily 's words during their little truth-or-dare game from last year…
Then Dean had come by and started flirting shamelessly with Ginny. She had pretended to be oblivious to his attempts, enjoying the dark looks of Alaric and Charlie. Harry's horrified expression when he visited - Ginny surrounded by three boys, her roommates in the other corner of the compartment - had been the icing on the cake. Maybe she could be able to summon a Patronus with this memory? She hadn't tried since getting her new wand.
Ginny could now understand how a Veela felt.
The potion she had taken last year had seemingly been very effective - much more than she had expected in just one year.
She had finally had enough when one of them, by accident, stepped on Daisy's foot. So she had, without much discussion, thrown them out. Harry's heartbroken look had been extremely cute and funny. He had only been able to say a few words to Ginny before the compartment was declared forbidden to boys.
Sometimes, being a beautiful girl was exhausting.
"Ginny?"
Ginny tore her gaze from the rolling English countryside to Daisy, who was fidgeting nervously.
"Don't you think you've been too harsh on the boys? Charlie didn't step on my foot on purpose," she added shyly, fidgeting with the hem of her Muggle dress.
Too adorable! Ginny couldn't resist. She swept Daisy into a tight hug, running her fingers through the girl's hair.
"Such a good girl. Daisy has become even cuter over the summer," Ginny declared gleefully, nuzzling the squeaking girl.
"Ginny!" Daisy exclaimed, embarrassed. "You promised you wouldn't do things like this!"
"I'd never make a promise so outrageous," Ginny replied, feigning indignation. "I can hug my Daisy whenever I like!"
The red-faced, embarrassed girl looked away from Ginny.
"Daisy is also way too precious. I will defend her from any evil boy."
Emily giggled from the other side of the compartment, making Ginny grin.
After a playful back-and-forth - Daisy pretending to scold her, Ginny pretending to be repentant, Ginny finally promising to behave… though it was obvious to both of them - probably - that this promise would last only until the next opportunity.
Meanwhile the Hogwarts Express moved steadily north and the scenery outside the window became wilder and darker while the clouds overhead thickened. Then they arrived at Hogwarts and as second years they used the carriages pulled by Thestrals to take them from Hogsmeade station to Hogwarts Castle.
Ginny didn't forget to pet the Thestral in front of their carriage, much to the bewilderment of the other girls.
"Ginny?" Mira asked cautiously. "Why are you petting the empty air?"
Did Mira maybe think that Ginny had gone bonkers?
So Ginny pretended to be slightly melancholic, answering, "The carriages are pulled by Thestrals."
She heard a sharp intake of breath behind her. Mira, as a pureblood, seemed to have heard of Thestrals before.
"Oh Ginny."
Ginny pretended to be sad while also pretending to hide her sadness with a smile when she turned around - she really was an awesome actor, wasn't she?
"It's okay, Mira. Come on," she said, tugging her friend gently into the carriage.
The Sorting had been an interesting experience. Last year, it had still been the original Ginny being sorted, while Alexander had remained confined to the diary.
It really hadn't even been a year since she had become Ginny. So much had happened since then…
Then Professor Dumbledore stood to speak.
"Welcome!" said Dumbledore, the candlelight shimmering on his beard. "Welcome to another year at Hogwarts! I regret to inform you that Professor Croaker will be returning to his research post at the Ministry of Magic and will therefore no longer be teaching here. However, I am pleased to welcome a new teacher to our ranks this year. Professor Lupin has kindly consented to fill the post of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher."
There was some scattered, rather unenthusiastic applause. It seemed that the news of Black and Pettigrew hadn't changed Lupin's decision to become a Hogwarts professor. Dumbledore also reminded them of Filch's forbidden item list and warned them not to enter the Forbidden Forest again, as he had last year.
"Well, I think that's everything of importance," said Dumbledore. "Let the feast begin!"
The golden plates and goblets before them suddenly filled with food and drink. It was a delicious feast - the hall echoed with chatter, laughter and the clatter of knives and forks.
At long last, when the last morsels of pumpkin tart had vanished from the golden platters, Dumbledore gave the word that it was time for them all to go to bed.
Emily, Mira, Daisy and Ginny joined the Gryffindors streaming up the marble staircase and, very tired now, wound their way along corridors and up more stairs to the hidden entrance to Gryffindor Tower. A large portrait of a fat lady in a pink dress asked them, "Password?"
"Coming through, coming through!" Percy called from behind the crowd. "The new password's 'Fortuna Major'!"
They reached their familiar circular dormitory, with its four beds in the girls' wing, and Ginny, pretending to be utterly exhausted, waited for her roommates to fall asleep.
She knew from her past life's memories that a boggart would be found in the staffroom at the beginning of Harry's third year - her second. There was therefore still something she had to do today.
Lupin's first Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson had been a worry for Ginny for some time. She had no idea if a boggart would be stopped by her Occlumency shields. What if it showed something she could not explain away? The boggart might transform into something that told everybody about her past life as Alexander or that she had killed Hermione and wasn't the original Ginny.
This was too much of a risk to leave alone.
So Ginny sneaked out of the Gryffindor Tower under an Invisibility Charm and made her way down to the staffroom on the ground floor, where she knew a boggart would soon be found by Professor Lupin and used for his first class.
Truth be told, she felt both nervous and curious about what form the boggart would take for her. How did everybody else seem to know their greatest fear?
Now she stood in front of the two stone gargoyles and wanted to bash her head against the stone wall. She didn't know the password and the Marauder's Map also didn't have it.
This was so stupid… Why hadn't she thought of that?
But luck was on her side and she found Filch near her on the map. Thankfully, he was in a corridor without paintings, so Ginny used Legilimency to get the password for the staffroom and Obliviated him afterwards.
Having a Squib on the staff, without Occlumency or magic to worry about, was very handy indeed.
She really needed to plan these things through better - but there was no time. It had to be today, before the boggart was found.
There was a real possibility that she wouldn't be able to fake a fear with Occlumency and would have to kill the boggart - if possible. Only the Killing Curse or Fiendfyre felt reliable enough for that. Maybe she could try basilisk venom first, since she wasn't sure whether those curses wouldn't be detected by the wards.
With the password, she managed to sneak in. The staffroom was a long, panelled room with mismatched, dark wooden chairs and there was the wardrobe on the other side. It began rattling as she neared, the boggart probably feeling her presence.
She cast a Muffliato Charm around the room, just to be safe.
Then she took a deep breath and with a swich of her wand, the doors of the wardrobe opened.
Out stepped… a white rabbit. One she was all too familiar with.
"Ah, Alexander. I hope you haven't forgotten about me? Don't you think it's time to return to the void with me and leave this false dream behind?"
The walls and chairs nearby began to disappear, swallowed by the emptiness of the void he knew all too well. As the rabbit took a step towards him, even the wardrobe began to disintegrate.
Could boggarts really influence everything around them too?
"Whether this is real or not, you can die at any time and whoever put you in the diary might do something similar again, no?" the rabbit continued conversationally. "Then you can finally stop pretending to be a little girl. Don't you think this is disgusting? A grown man," the rabbit's voice turned harsh and loathsome, "pretending to be a child, kissing and seducing children like some paedophile."
Ginny took a deep breath. She was Ginny Weasley and this was just a boggart talking. She tried to isolate all thoughts and memories about the diary and the void and hide them behind her strongest mind shields…
Thankfully, it worked.
The void vanished and Harry stood in front of her, a blood-stained slicing knife in his hand.
She knew this knife - it was the one with which Anastasia had killed Alexander. On the ground lay a copy of Ginny's body, lifeless, with several stab wounds.
Harry didn't look at the false body at all. He stared straight into Ginny's eyes, full of disgust and hatred.
"You killed Hermione!" he screamed. For a moment, she feared someone outside hearing the scream, but then remembered her earlier Muffliato Charm.
"You are pretending to be Ginny," he continued, pointing the knife in her direction, "but you killed her too! You are just some disgusting old man pretending to be a little girl. I will kill you, I swear! You might have manipulated me with your lies, but…"
"Riddikulus!"
The boggart transformed into a chair. Ginny couldn't take it anymore. Her Occlumency was calming her down at full force, but beneath this, her thoughts and feelings were a mess.
"Calm down. You are Ginny Weasley. Nobody knows about Alexander outside your mind and nobody will ever find out," she told herself, but even to her own ears, it rang hollow.
If she hadn't thought of the boggart, then this would have happened in front of the whole DADA class. Her lies weren't as safe as she wished.
The chair was rattling. Soon, the boggart would break free from the Boggart-Banishing Spell and transform again.
So Ginny tried something new. She pushed a clear picture to the forefront of her mind, surrounding it with false feelings of fear, while hiding everything else behind her strongest mind shields.
And it worked.
When the boggart broke free, it transformed into a round, pale ball. The first false fear that came to Ginny's mind was Lupin's fear of the moon. Thankfully, she was able to fool it like this.
With a swich of her wand, she then banished the boggart back into the wardrobe. She was completely exhausted. She knew it hadn't been real, that it was only a projection of her deepest subconscious fears, but it was still not a very pleasant experience.
She walked back to her awaiting bed in the Gryffindor second-year girls' dormitory under an Invisibility Charm, after she had calmed down, ignoring Filch as she passed him.
The next day, as the first lesson of the first day, the second-year Gryffindors had Defence Against the Dark Arts with Professor Lupin, together with the Slytherins. They were led to the staffroom by Lupin, just as with Harry's class in the third book. There probably had been a staff meeting in the morning where the boggart had been found.
As Professor Lupin went to stand next to it, the wardrobe gave a sudden wobble, banging against the wall.
"Nothing to worry about," said Professor Lupin calmly, though a few people had jumped backwards in alarm.
"There's a boggart in there," he explained, but some students, especially the Muggle-born ones, didn't seem to know what that was.
After an explanation about what a boggart was and about the Boggart-Banishing Spell - Riddikulus - it was Ginny's turn to demonstrate the spell against the boggart, much like Neville in the original story.
Apparently, Lupin had already been briefed to challenge Ginny specifically.
Truth be told, Ginny felt a little vindictive towards Lupin - or maybe it was because she was still tired from her nightly excursion? Having only three hours of sleep - even with Occlumency - did make her grumpy.
"On the count of three, Miss Weasley," said Professor Lupin, pointing his own wand at the handle of the wardrobe. "One… two… three… now!"
Lupin hadn't asked Ginny what her greatest fear was beforehand, so now she could choose freely with her newly mastered Occlumency method. Her first thought was werewolves - what kind of face would Lupin make in that case? But why would her greatest fear be werewolves?
'Let's traumatise my cute classmates a little bit,' she thought to herself.
A jet of sparks shot from the end of Professor Lupin's wand and hit the doorknob. The wardrobe burst open.
As the smoke was lifting, a horrible scene became visible before their eyes.
The bodies of the entire Weasley family, except Ginny, were lying on the ground in a large pool of blood. Her mother and father, the twins, Ron and Percy - even Bill and Charlie. Some corpses had been hacked to pieces, some had their throats slit and some had been mutilated in other horrific ways.
Ginny hadn't really imagined all these gruesome details in advance…
There were some girls shrieking behind Ginny while she just kept looking, transfixed by the scene. She hadn't expected to be this affected by it. At this moment, she realised that she really liked her new family and that she would be genuinely sad and angry if something like this happened to them.
Was there someone sobbing behind her? Ginny just stood there without moving.
"Miss Weasley?" Professor Lupin's cautious voice was heard behind her. He sounded a bit guilty. Nobody saw her face. "Remember, 'Riddikulus' is the chant you need to use…"
Good thing this wasn't her real fear.
"I… I can't think of anything funny at the moment, Professor," Ginny answered in a hushed voice.
Lupin's answer to this was interrupted by a quiet voice from the back of the silent classroom.
"Such a ridiculous fear. Good riddance, I say, if all those blood traitors die," Harper whispered to another Slytherin.
"Mr. Harper!" Lupin for once seemed genuinely angry - who would have thought? "Keep your vile comments to yourself. Twenty points from Slytherin."
"What?"
Maybe Ginny should get rid of Harper? Ginny's eyes turned cold as she looked at him.
It would be much easier than with Hermione. Maybe a potion accident? A few wandless compulsions and boom…
Such a tragedy. A young life cut short by not listening to his Potions teacher.
Or falling from a broom? Ginny tilted her head in deep thought while still looking at Harper. His precious little neck seemed very fragile, didn't it?
"Don't let him get to you, Ginny," Mira said, taking her hand and pulling her away. Ginny mutely nodded, pretending to look sad instead of angry. Why was she this angry again? Strange…
Then it was the turn of her classmates.
Daisy's greatest fear was comparatively cute - her parents forbidding her from becoming a witch and attending Hogwarts. Harper's greatest fear was his parents being disappointed in him and Emily apparently feared being ignored and disliked by everyone.
The Carrow twins' boggart was unexpectedly wholesome for Slytherins - at least in Ginny's view. Each saw the dead body of their twin sister. Ginny wondered whether her own boggart had set a precedent there.
Ginny enjoyed how Daisy cutely shrieked and covered her eyes.
She also glanced at Lupin and saw him wince at that. He had probably thought that second-years had nothing worse than childish fears - monsters, teachers or disappointed parents.
Then it was Mira's turn. Ginny had wondered if her boggart would reveal to everybody her closeted homosexuality. And seeing how pale Mira was, it seemingly was also Mira's first thought.
Her boggart transformed into her parents - Ginny had seen them at King's Cross. For a moment, Ginny thought that Mira's worst fear would be her parents being disappointed, like with Harper, but then Mira's mother began to shout angrily.
"A witch's witch!? Do you know how disappointed I am in you, young lady? Can you even imagine what the other pure-blood families will think of us?"
"R… Riddikulus!" squeaked Mira and her parents transformed into two clowns, but something told Ginny that Mira didn't feel like laughing at this moment.
The Slytherins behind them began whispering, while many of the Gryffindors didn't know how to react to it. Ginny, being the good friend that she was, hugged Mira, who was still frozen in place - even if that only intensified the Slytherins' whispering. She really wanted to roll her eyes at that.
"It's okay, Mira," she whispered in her ear. "I'm here for you and so are Daisy and Emily."
Lupin ended the class soon after that. Something told Ginny that he hadn't expected his first class to go like this.