Now, I'm not ashamed to say that I am OBSESSED with Harry Potter, and along with that obsession comes over analysis of characters, like Ginny Weasley. If anyone reading this doesn't like Ginny, as I know many do, then you'll probably not like this, but oh well. This blog isn't read by anyone anyway.
I see people all over the internet hating Ginny. I think it's because of her relationship with Harry and how 'sudden' it was, but I do not see anything wrong with her going out with, and eventually marrying, Harry. One of these reasons (which is what I will be elaborating upon) is the fact that she is the only person Harry is close to that knows what it's like to have Voldemort inside your mind, messing with your thoughts and feelings.
Don't worry, you Harry/Ginny haters, this isn't going to be defending them, I just want to write about Ginny and the diary.
I feel like very few people pick up on the fact that Ginny was POSESSED for the best part of a year by Voldemort (ok, Tom Riddle, but come on, younger Voldemort is still Voldemort). I mean seriously, we have a mention of Ginny being embarassed that Harry saved her (will talk about this later) and the mention that Ginny was badly affected by Dementors in PoA, her line in OotP and that's it. Come on, the Weasleys and Harry can't be that dense surely. They would have noticed more things wrong with her...
Then again, they didn't notice the fact that Ginny was really quiet, which according to Ron was 'unlike her,' for a year.
After rereading CoS and reading quite a few fanfics on the matter, a few things I can be ALMOST certain happened to Ginny.
1. She idolized Tom almost as much as she did Harry, but she found Tom a lot easier to talk to. I doubt she would have told Tom as much as she did if she didn't idolize him.
2. Tom turned her away from her family. Now, don't get me wrong I absolutely LOVE the Weasleys, but being a member of the Weasley family can't be easy. They tease each other constantly and I think it would all too easy for someone as manipulative as Tom Riddle to turn Ginny's thoughts from thinking the teasing was harmless to taking all of it to heart and thinking her brothers hate her. After all, she didn't want to tell them about Tom until she was in way too deep and maybe figured out he'd been manipulating her, but those kind of trust issues don't go away easily. I think that it was a bit more than a crush on Harry that kept her away from the Golden Trio for that long of a time.
3. Tom turned her against the idea of having friends. Who is Ginny friends with in her first year? Really? We can't say Colin for sure, especially since she is never seen talking to him after CoS. And would Tom really want Ginny being close to anyone? A friend could notice if something was a bit off about her. A friend would be someone she could confide in when she got worried about what she was doing in her blackouts, so no, Tom would not want Ginny to be close to anyone. Pair that with the fact that Ginny isn't seen socialising with anyone until OotP, which is Micheal Corner and Luna Lovegood, and it just goes to show that Tom really did impact her descisions in Hogwarts, even after he had been stabbed to death with his pet Basilisk's fang.
4. Leading on from the previous statement, Ginny never really got over what Tom did to her. Like I said, Ginny didn't really start socialising with other people until the end of GoF (it's mentioned in OotP, but it was GoF when she started coming out of her shell). She made friends with Luna and Neville, two social outcasts who had both been through terrible things, just like she had, and she didn't really start talking to Ron again until halfway through her fourth year. Another thing I feel I should talk about, which was mentioned earlier, was Ginny's line in OotP (about being possessed by Voldemort). The fact that she is able to bring it up as an argument then and there shows that she still thinks about it, a lot.
5. Ginny feels seriously guilty about what she did. First of all, who wouldn't? Second of all, the fact that Ginny is awkward around Hermione, Harry and possibly Colin shows this, and then there's the whole 'elbow in the butter' incident in PoA. I said this earlier but I really feel like this needs over analysing. Because the books are in Harry's POV we get Harry's version of events for that incident, and he just puts the elbow in the butter down to Ginny's schoolgirl crush, but I think that Ginny ACTUALLY feels really guilty about being the person who's fault it was that brought Tom back and the reason why Harry had to fight a Basilisk in the first place. In her first year, Ginny probably though that Harry saw her as pathetic, but in her second year, Ginny was probably extremely anxious to see what Harry would think of her and whether or not he would hate her for what she did. Of course, there are other ways of proving her guilt (Ginny even felt guilty when she was being manipulated by Tom), but that was just the one I picked up on.
Now, I think those five are enough, even though I could probably go on. Maybe I'll write a fanfic incoporating all of these one day but I doubt it. But before people start hating on Ginny and calling her naive and stupid for what she did (because I've seen comments like that floating around as well), I just want to point out that when the whole diary incident was taking place, Ginny was 11 years old. Yes, we may have known better, but let's face it, we have hindsight. She didn't.
Ok, so now that that's over, it was nice writing this again but don't expect a quick update (I'm telling this to myself as the only person who reads my blog) and I'll write another when I feel like it. So I'll see you in a few months :D
