"Ginny, are you alright? You've seemed exhausted lately."
During Thursday afternoon's flying lesson, Rowan Mercer walked over with an easy smile to where Ginny Weasley sat alone beneath a tree. Flying class was usually her favorite. She was normally the loudest, the boldest, the one who never wanted to land. Lately, though, even a broom couldn't lift her spirits.
"Rowan," Ginny asked hesitantly, "if someone makes a mistake… but not of their own free will… do you think they can be forgiven?"
Rowan considered this carefully before answering. "That depends on whether they're brave enough. Making a mistake isn't the problem. Everyone does, even Dumbledore did when he was young. What matters is realizing it, admitting it, and trying to fix it. If someone does that, they deserve forgiveness."
"Really?" Ginny's eyes brightened. "As long as they try to fix it?"
"Yes," Rowan said firmly.
Before the school year, Ginny had found a strange diary hidden among secondhand books. It answered her when she wrote in it. It listened. It guided her. She trusted it far more than she should have, pouring her fears and secrets onto its pages. Only later did she realize she was losing control of her own body. That she had opened the Chamber. That she had unleashed the basilisk.
Terrified, she had tried to destroy the diary, throwing it into a toilet. Somehow, Harry had found it. In panic, she stole it back. And now, worse still, the control had returned. The basilisk had nearly killed Rowan and Hermione. Dumbledore had been removed because of it.
Rowan reached into his robes and produced a butterfly-shaped metal bookmark. "I bought this in Diagon Alley over Christmas. The shopkeeper said it helps ward off dark magic and bad luck. I want you to have it."
Ginny took it, stunned, then smiled for the first time in days. "Thank you. I really like it."
"You look better when you smile," Rowan said gently, ruffling her hair before walking away.
That night, Ginny slipped the butterfly bookmark into the cursed diary and hid it beneath her bed. Tomorrow, she decided, she would tell Harry everything.
At two in the morning, Rowan sat upright in his bed.
He quietly raised his wand and cast the same spell three times.
"Stupefy."
His dormmates slept on, undisturbed.
Rowan slipped out of the Slytherin dormitory and into a deserted corner of the castle grounds. A brief flash of magic rippled over him, his body expanding until he stood taller than a grown man. He followed it with another spell.
"Metamorph Wardrobe."
His stretched pajamas reshaped themselves into a tight, black outfit that covered him head to toe, leaving only his eyes visible. It was a minor transfiguration charm he'd learned from an obscure lifestyle spellbook, useless in combat but perfect for nights like this.
With a flick of his hand, a broom appeared.
Flying openly was out of the question tonight. He took a long, winding route around the castle, circling for nearly an hour before approaching Gryffindor Tower from an unexpected angle.
Thanks to the magnetic trace he'd embedded in the butterfly bookmark, finding Ginny's dormitory window was effortless.
Male students couldn't enter girls' dormitories through the common room stairs, but windows were another matter.
"Alohomora."
The latch clicked softly.
Rowan slipped inside.
Ginny slept soundly. The bookmark's pull led him straight to the box beneath her bed.
"There it is."
He retrieved the battered diary without hesitation. The reassurance he'd given Ginny earlier had served its purpose. The bookmark made the diary impossible to miss.
The diary vanished into Rowan's storage space, and he left as silently as he'd come.
By morning, Ginny would still believe she had time.
Rowan knew better.