Ginny lay in the narrow hospital bed, her various wounds throbbing uncomfortably beneath their bandages – a perpetual reminder of her changed state of being, as if the Darkness’ wry taunts and whispers weren’t enough. Madam Pomfrey had run some blood chemistry tests and confirmed what she and Dudley had already guessed – the lycanthropic virus had taken root in her body. And ever since the confirmation, the Darkness had muttered away in her mind, conspiring, but Ginny couldn’t so much as think of telling Madam Pomfrey about the voice in her head, let alone his plans, without a seizing pain that spread up from her chest and through her jaw – a warning. Her body was not hers anymore – but that had been true for months. It almost felt as if the lycanthropy wasn’t hers either – just another tool of his.

The only bright spot was Dudley. Well, that wasn’t giving Rhiannon enough credit – she tried her best to be a bright spot, once she woke up and got her face back to as near a human shape as they could manage, and she was kind and attentive. But she was so guilty, and Ginny could hear her crying through the wall that separated her private room from the main Hospital Wing where Ginny lay. It was an obligation to Rhiannon, to be kind to her – Rhiannon felt responsible for her and her condition, and she was caring for Ginny like a little sister – and that grated on her. Dudley, on the other hand – he treated her like an actual person, respected her frustrations, and for the first time all year she had someone she could talk to. Not about the Darkness but, everything else – and even with that heavy secret, it helped to let go of the rest.

Rhiannon Potter had been confined to the hospital wing with her irrepressibly waggy tail and twitching ears, but Ginny only had a case of early-onset lycanthropy – and that didn’t get her out of class. Well, that was not entirely true – Madam Pomfrey had offered to let her out of classes. But nobody could see the drastic changes her body was undergoing, just a bandage on her wrist, and so it didn’t feel like a good enough reason to drop classes. Someone might get suspicious, start asking questions she couldn’t answer – it wasn’t as if she could tell anyone she’d been bitten by a werewolf, they’d want to know who it was! This was Rhiannon’s secret too, not just hers.

So Ginny attended regular classes, then came back in the afternoons for extra study with Rhiannon in the hospital wing. It was a little tricky, being as they were in different years, but at junior level the classes were honestly pretty similar and, well, Ginny was a Slytherin for a reason – she wanted to get ahead. Working a year ahead on her class work, one-on-one with an older student? Yeah, that was certainly a good way to get there.

This afternoon, the two of them were working on Charms, and as Rhiannon had vestigial paws, they were working on practicals. Flitwick had them working on charms that manipulated the environment – colour change, shrinking and enlarging charms, softening and hardening, that sort of thing. But Rhiannon got distracted by the idea, and now her side room was full of greenery with no space left for the two of them thanks to an overpowered herbivicus charm. “Ack – Rhi!” Ginny protested, as a trailing vine tickled her face and another curled around her ankle. “Turn it off!”

“I don- I dunno th-the counterspell!” Rhiannon gasped, as another vine struck her across the chest and sent her sprawling. Right, as it happened, into a particular redhead’s lap. Ginny went stiff, and the both of them blushed furiously, but there was no chance to extricate themselves as the vines and shrubs Rhiannon had conjured filled up the room.

“Gimme that sheet,” Ginny spluttered, reaching awkwardly across Rhiannon in search of the notes they’d been working from. “Where’s it – ah hell, desinat crescente,” she managed at last. The rapid growth of Rhiannon’s plants ceased at last but the plants did not retract, and Ginny groaned as she got to reading the fine print of how the spell worked. It had activated seeds caught in the bricks of the walls, those that had been carried in on students’ clothes, the fibres of the wood floor itself – it wasn’t a conjuration, so they couldn’t just get rid of the mess with a counterspell.

And on reading that, all Ginny could do was laugh, even with Rhiannon still sprawled across her. “You just wrecked your room!” she exclaimed, falling back on the floor as she cackled helplessly. “Look at all this!”

Rhiannon groaned and flopped dramatically across Ginny’s torso. Her shoulder dug into Ginny’s pelvis, and one of her hands brushed Ginny’s cheek. And it was like the world stopped around them, the out-of-control greenery a magical paradise just for them. Ginny sat up, the better to bend over Rhiannon, hovering with their faces inches apart. “Ginny,” Rhiannon whispered, meeting her eyes for a brief, rare moment. Even half-wolfish from the potion accident, she was beautiful to Ginny, and for just then, it was all she’d ever wanted. Then Rhiannon’s face fell, and she wriggled free of their improvised embrace.

“I can’t – we can’t, it’s not right, not after what I did,” Rhiannon whispered, and she hauled herself to her misshapened almost-digitigrade feet, and padded from the crowded leaving Ginny alone with the Darkness and the first bitter ache of a child’s heartbreak.

A sick little freak, and even he wouldn’t choose you? Oh, such a pity, my little monster. Sit tight, Ginevra Weasley... your time will come. I’m not done with you yet.

_____________________________________________________________________

After their almost-kiss, things were tense with Rhiannon and Ginny – and the rest of the hospital wing. With the greenery taking over her side room – and it would be some time before the faculty could completely remove it, given the floorboards had sprung to life in several places – Rhiannon was back on the main ward, furry tail and all. Ginny had already felt like an outsider in the school, being the last Weasley kid sorted and the only Slytherin of the seven, the only girl, not quite sure of her sexuality or even her gender while her siblings seemed so secure... but sharing a ward with Rhiannon was the worst isolation yet.

See, Rhiannon had friends – her pack, her family. And some of her family was Ginny’s family too, and she felt jealous that they went to Rhiannon first. It hurt that she had to share them, when she had so few friends already. The few friends she had in Slytherin didn’t know what had happened to her, not even Hailey, because telling them would endanger Rhiannon and Dudley. But as the lycanthropic virus set in, the first signs it showed were not in her body but in her mind – Ginny wanted her pack. Her family. And she felt cut out, neglected, like she should have belonged with them – with Rhiannon and Dudley. But with Rhiannon’s guilt and grief over the turning, Ginny was instead left firmly on the outskirts and that hurt.

Worse, Professor Lockhart was organising a Valentines’ dance. And while Ginny was allowed to attend – she wasn’t contagious or even technically sick anymore – it would be like she was a ghost. And she wasn’t shy, she liked parties and friends and the idea of dates, so the prospect of going to the dance alone? That thought killed her – and the Darkness’ constant taunts about her lonely state only made it harder.

But Ginevra Weasley didn’t sit around moping, Darkness or otherwise. Maybe she was drowning, but she was damned if she wouldn’t try to swim for the surface. She’d try until she couldn’t any more. And she wouldn’t just let her feelings for Rhiannon sit, she wouldn’t drown in those either.

So she wrote a poem. It was a very silly poem, and Ginny hated it. But it didn’t need to be a good poem, because she wasn’t a poet. She was an artist. And with her weathered colour pencils, over several days, she drew something much better than any silly poem. A wolf would have been too obvious, and risked outing them both. Instead she drew a moon, hanging low over hills like those around the castle, the silhouette of a forest below the hills and luminous eyes, yellow-green and staring bright in the darkness at the lowest edge of the page. And inside went the poem – a very silly, poorly-written poem, but it was meant to be sung and Ginny’s voice was much prettier than the clumsy words. Next was the enchantment – captis carmen, that instructed the card to take the poem-song and hold it, captured in the page its’ words were written upon. Performing the song was easy enough. And then, the letter inside itself, on the free page.

Rhiannon, she wrote.

I’m not angry with you. It was an accident – please stop shutting me out. And it’s not some stupid bond because you bit me, I know the stories. I like you. I care about you. I want you to be my Valentine, even if you can’t come to the dance. But if that’s not up for offer, I’d like to be friends.

Ginny.

And with that finished, inked in her best handwriting, Ginny closed the card. “Cantare in ostium,” she murmured – sing on opening. They’d reviewed Silencing spells together that afternoon, before Rhiannon had got distracted by herbivicus and woken every speck of plant matter in the room – she would know how to shut it up so she could read in peace.

Why do you bother? He’s never going to choose you, my little leashed monster, the Darkness whispered. Ginny curled her lip, and electric pain lanced through every fibre of her nervous system, leaving Ginny twitching and gasping in her bed.

“Ginevra, are you quite alright?” Madam Pomfrey asked, looking up from where she worked at a side desk in concern.

Ginny managed a grimace. “Ah – fine, Madam Pomfrey,” she replied, and to her credit she managed to keep most of the pain from her voice. “I think I just hit my wrist on the bed-frame.”

Madam Pomfrey sighed and shook her head sadly. “Ah – of course. I am very sorry I couldn’t heal it outright, the viral particles complicate things,” she apologised.

Ginny snorted, but that at least she managed to keep quiet. The bite on her wrist was the least of her worries, and of her pain. But she couldn’t tell the nurse that, only laugh about it bitterly to herself. Pain was a constant companion nowadays, had been even before the bite. That was just how life worked. The Darkness had made that clear.

_____________________________________________________________________

But as things turned out, Ginny never delivered the letter. If she was more of a coward, she could have blamed the Darkness, but no. This was simply her own fear of rejection at work. She didn’t ask anyone else to the dance. In fact, she did not go to the dance at all – she had underestimated the crippling pain that left her bedbound that close to the full moon. So instead she lay in a bed in a side room, half-listening to the joyous sounds of the impromptu party Rhiannon’s friends had thrown her in the hospital wing, and doing her best to ignore the Darkness’ snide mutterings. There was one benefit to this full-moon pain, Ginny thought grimly – the Darkness couldn’t use pain against her anymore. Of course, she was also in too much pain to so much as think of telling her secrets, but it was a nice thought, and satisfying to consider that in this pain, she had freedom.

So Valentines’ passed bitterly, bringing the full moon quickly in its’ wake. And the full moon brought its’ own kind of freedom, one that despite her depression and her jaded outlook, Ginny couldn’t help but be eager for. In the last few days prior to the moon a fire had kindled in her blood, driving Ginny to pace and growl in frustration at being cooped up. So when it finally arrived, it brought with it a savage joy that lent energy to Ginny’s agonised body as she limped from the castle, following Rhiannon, Dudley and Hagrid at a distance down to his cabin at the edge of the great Forest.

“How does it, work?” Ginny asked Hagrid, hating how small she sounded in that moment as they halted in the thin, patchy snow that lay before his cabin. The burning in her blood was stronger now, sickening, and Ginny thought she might vomit with the overwhelming pressure of it all.

Hagrid smiled sadly and patted Ginny’s shoulder in what was clearly meant to be a comforting sort of manner, but in her current state it was agonising and to Ginny’s horror her reflex reaction was to snap at him, a growl rising involuntarily in her throat. “I’m sorry!” she gasped, but Hagrid only shook his head and stepped back.

“No, no matter – it’s my fault. To be blunt, the first turn is the worst. Your lycanthropy has firmly set in by now, but there are more changes that occur over the first six months to a year of life as a werewolf – your joints become hypermobile to accomodate the change and prevent damage, among other adaptations. Without these, the first turn and the first year over all are the hardest.” Hagrid told her, kneeling to rummage through a bag that he had left beside his door. From it he drew a thick woollen blanket, which he handed to Ginny. She grimaced – it prickled against her oversensitive hands and it smelled strongly of horse.

“For the cold,” Dudley explained, as he took a similar blanket from Hagrid. “Normally we’d find a spot in the grass, squash it down a bit, but there’s all this crusty old snow lying around, you’d freeze in it. So you wanna lay this down beside a tree or a bush, wherever looks comfortable enough.”

Comfortable, like this? Was what Ginny wanted to snap back at him. But she bit her tongue – Dudley was only trying to be helpful, and he had more experience with this than she did. But it did rankle her pride to take comfort in a horse blanket – even if curling up under a bush did sound really good right about now. I guess I really am an animal, she thought miserably.

Oh, you’re something better, little monster. Now run along, find a private place... You’ll never been able to hide from me.

Ginny shivered, unsettled, and folded the blanket under her arm. “Find a quiet place, got it,” she replied stiffly, speaking more to set aside her unease than anything else. “But how does it work – do I just wait, or what?”

Dudley grimaced and shook his head. “Normally, we’d look up at the moon. It takes us, holds us, see – makes the change easier, faster. But it’s cloudy tonight. So instead, we’ll just have to wait it out. It’s absolutely miserable, our first turn was the same. It hurts. You’ll scream. We won’t judge you, we’ll even try not to listen, just... be ready, I guess.”

Ginny couldn’t pretend to be unafraid. She was eleven, even if she was more accustomed to pain and horror than anyone her age should be. But even if she was accustomed to pain, hearing Dudley – barely older than she was – describe the experience so matter-of-factly, that scared her. The Darkness had retreated – perhaps he was afraid of the pain, perhaps he was plotting, she didn’t particularly care. Ginny simply straightened herself up as best she could, adjusted the horse blanket under her arm and managed a shaky smile as she turned away from the three of them. “I’ll manage. See you on four paws, I suppose,” she replied hoarsely, unable to quite keep the tremble from her voice as she did so.

And then Ginny was alone, tracking an uncertain path toward the edge of the forest. She was too afraid even to revel in the rare period of silence. The vial of Wolfsbane lay heavy in her pocket, the blanket itched her hand, and as soon as she found an appropriate ring of bushes Ginny threw down her irritating burden and collapsed in the snow. First things – wolfsbane. She took the potion from her potion and turned it over in her hand, wrinkling her nose at the acrid herbal smell that emanated from it even while it remained corked.

Now, I don’t want you to take that, little monster. I don’t like my pets leashed. Tip it on the ground, now. Go on. Tip it out.

The Darkness whispered maliciously in Ginny’s mind, and she shook her head grimly. “I’m not going to hurt people,” she growled. “You’ve already got your snake for that, you don’t need me.”

Oh, but the Basilisk is confined to the castle by its’ need for heat, among other things. You? You, on the other hand, well... You are a more versatile tool, a dagger as compared to a sword. And you will tip that vial out, or I will hurt you. And then I will hurt your friends anyway.

Ginny gritted her teeth and clenched the fist that did not hold the vial, trembling in anticipation of the pain. Before, that threat would have silenced her, the pain the worst she had ever felt. But now – he had lost his leverage over her. Every waking moment was pain, and right now that pain was at its’ height – every nerve he could tweak was already shrieking. So Ginny resisted, even as the electric agony spread through her body. It faded as the pain of the change swelled to replace it and Ginny laughed, a raw, choking cackle of someone far older than eleven, as the Darkness hissed with fury.

You defiant little... well, I underestimated you, little monster, the Darkness mocked her.

“Yeah, well that was bloody stupid of you,” Ginny gasped, twitching as another spasm – this one the product of her own innate condition – wracked her body. Her joints creaked as she dragged the vial closer to her mouth, every movement a battle against the Darkness that infected her body. A battle she was determined to win.

And you underestimate me, wolf-blood, the Darkness growled, and sent another surge of pain flaring through her body. Ginny clenched her fists, trembling, determined to ride it out without screaming – she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. And then all of a sudden it eased, the loss as disorienting as a rug being pulled from under her. But something had changed, a stinging somewhere, and Ginny looked down with a sinking feeling at her hand, blood and potion mixing together as they dripped out of her fist. Even as she opened it, she knew what the Darkness had done – he had tricked her, hidden his actions in pain while he manipulated her very muscles to break the vial she had tried to protect. Now each flare of pain was a warning, and Ginny’s heart began to race as she frantically picked the shards of glass from her palm licking the mess in some desperate attempt to retain the rapidly vanishing potion. She could lose her body, it wouldn’t be the first time – but not her mind. Anything but her mind.

Again the Darkness cackled, an ugly sound, and in that moment Ginny knew she would never hate anyone quite as much as she did this thing that latched itself onto her being. She fell back against the blanket as her elbow cracked, broke and reshaped itself, but the scream torn from her throat was one of fury as much as one of pain. She would survive this, she would tear it free of her and she would kill him, in all his forms. Whatever he made her do, he would come to regret. She would make him regret it.

Feisty, little monster, the Darkness growled, but Ginny hardly cared now for his whispers as each tearing spasm of pain reached into her mind and stole it, bit by bit, the cares and fears that made her Ginny dissolving into wild terror, the thrashing panic of the cornered beast that now, without her potion, the moon forced her to become.

And even as a beast, she would fight him. From the first kill she foiled, she had fought him. Ginny tore her throat raw as she screamed, promising death and vengeance, heedless of the pain the moon-cycle forced upon her as her spine cracked and burned as a tail grew where there had been none, her skull warped and stretched gruesomely, her very fingertips cracked and bled as her nails hardened and thickened into claws. She was shrieking, choking on her own blood and gasping for air from lungs that could hold none as they reshaped themselves, and all too soon there was nothing left of Ginny Weasley in the body that lay gasping on the woollen blanket.

At least, nothing of the Ginny Weasley known before. In some ways, the wolf that remained was Ginny Weasley at her truest – fierce, stubborn, loyal, intent. And the beast fought the Darkness as strongly as Ginny had before, with all the power she had lacked. Her snarls tore through the night, bringing her companions running. But the red wolf on the moors didn’t know Rhiannon, or Dudley, or Hagrid. She might have remembered them given enough time. But she had no time – only pain, and darkness, and a monster to fight that she could not see.

The wolf snarled, baring long teeth in a warning as the two others – one white, one black – approached, followed by the huge two-legged. They were dimly familiar, but she didn’t care – there was something in her, clawing at her insides, trying to direct her body and she fought it with every step.

Every instinct told the red wolf to find her pack, but the hollowness inside reminded her she had none. And the thing riding her body was dangerous, to the other wolves, to the countless lives in the castle on the hill, the distant smell of human drifting to her on the wind. The red wolf of the moors snarled again and let her hackles rise, she was larger than the black wolf and faster than the white. As best she could she told them to stay put, stay away, but that was only a temporary measure – the darkness was clawing again at her and for all her strength, she could not fight all night.

So instead the red wolf turned, and she ran. The small black wolf followed for a time but the red was stronger, fiercer, and she held her pace until the black wolf was forced to fall behind. And all the while the dark thing rode with her, chattering and clawing and pummelling at her mind, determined to tear the red wolf loose from her own consciousness. The red wolf understood nothing, none of what it told her, but she did understand the sinking feeling that swallowed her up even as her paws skimmed across the grass, the sensations that made up the world stolen from her and leaving her trapped, howling and snarling in the void.

I’ll get you when I need you, monster, the Darkness told her, and this time the red wolf understood – there was a hissing quality to the voice and somehow that made it hold in her mind. You just sit tight and wait.