Lucky you
Part of what annoys me so much about the fact that Ginny’s trauma was never adequately addressed in the aftermath of the whole Chamber of Secrets ordeal is that it doesn’t feel purposeful. It reads like JKR either didn’t care enough to explore it or straight up forgot. But the fact that Ginny kind of … disappears for a bit and that her experiences in her first year are barely addressed afterwards could totally have served a purpose if JKR had actively made and owned the decision to write her like that and address these things later. Really only takes a bit of re-framing and re-writing later on.
It’d still be sad as shit: It really speaks to the tragedy of Ginny’s whole case that as far as we know, she went through much of the aftermath alone. She pulled herself up from rock bottom and learned to function with this terrible thing having happened to her and on top of it all, had to be the person to remind everyone around her that it happened in the first place.
“Lucky you”, and all that.
(I feel inclined to say it also speaks to her strength that she did do it alone and came out stronger on the other side or whatever, and while I don’t disagree with that, that feels like I’m bordering on glorifying the whole thing, so, hm.)
But it’s not all that unfathomable. Being possessed by a magical diary, that is also a Horcrux, which we don’t even KNOW at that point, can’t be a common occurrence. Ginny isn’t a textbook case. Therapy in whatever shape or form doesn’t really appear to be a thing in the wizarding world. So assume that just like in the book canon we got, the adults do mostly nothing, and all the kids around Ginny eventually just forget all this ever happened because, well, she seems fine, doesn’t she?
Whatever friends she made after that (we’ve not been led to believe she had many in her first year) didn’t know the details of what happened to her, so she would have had to put herself through the task of explaining it, over and over and over again, and risk not being believed or taken seriously because no one we meet ever DOES take this shit seriously. Or she’d have to keep it to herself and live with the fact that no one around her knew what was going on. Either way, she’s on her own.
So all that stays the same: that’s not a writing decision I would have taken issue with, really, if I’d felt like there was a point to it.
We get to the “Lucky you” scene, where Ginny has to remind everyone what happened to her, because even Harry, the person who went down into the Chamber and fought a basilisk to save her, just … forgot. Literally forgot. But this time when she walks out of that room, the people in Ginny’s life who were around for the Chamber of Secrets episode (Hermione is exempt from that - girl was literally petrified) don’t get the luxury of forgetting it again.
Instead they have to actually sit with what they were just told, and slowly it dawns on them that yeah, everyone, everyone in her life, really fucking failed Ginny. For years. Over and over and over again. And they’d have to work really hard to rectify that, because how do they, years after the fact? How do all of Ginny’s relationships heal from the fact that she’s been let down like that?
It’ll impact her relationship with Harry and her relationship with her siblings (mostly with Ron, I’d argue, because, again, he was there) and her parents and her relationship with Hogwarts, too. Hogwarts as an institution failed her tremendously.
Maybe we come to the conclusion that the wizarding world is terrible at recognising, acknowledging or treating trauma (which … yeah! water is wet) or that you need to pay attention to your fucking friends. There’s a consequence to making her do this alone, and if she has to do it alone, then she deserves for the consequences to be acknowledged and dealt with.
And heck, all this even explains why she’s not particularly present or involved in the main plots for a while there. It’s not that unfathomable that if your baby older brother and his bestie save you from your certain death, but then don’t recognise this will have lasting effects on you, or fail to check up on you, you’ll start to pull away. Develop some complicated feelings towards them. Do things on your own.
Instead, we get my most hated line in all seven Harry Potter books, and yes, that’s including Albus Severus:
“On the other hand, Ginny Weasley was perfectly happy again.” Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets, Bloomsbury paperback, page 320
That’s ONE (1) chapter after she NARROWLY ESCAPES DEATH and I’m going to lose my FUCKING SHIT ABOUT IT.
Like, having read the rest of the books, having read the “Lucky you” scene, having thought about the “Lucky you” scene EXCESSIVELY, this feels almost comically naive. Which is, you know, fair, considering we’ve got a literal twelve-year-old narrating, but we know he’s wrong, which leads me right back to the beginning of this monstrosity of a post. And we might hear it from Harry, but he’s no more naive than every. single. adult. involved in this. So, one more time with feeling: blindly assuming that “Ginny Weasley was perfectly happy again” mere pages after the showdown in the Chamber of Secrets was a TERRIBLE MISTAKE.
And she deserved to have that acknowledged somehow.
To top it all of, my very favourite play weirdly and clumsily backtracks on the whole disaster:
“After I came out of hospital - everyone ignored me, shut me out - other than, that is, the boy who had everything - who came across the Gryffindor common room and challenged me to a game of Exploding Snap. People think they know all there is to know about you, but the best bits of you are - have always been - heroic in really quiet ways. My point is - after this is over, just remember if you could that sometimes people - but particularly children - just want someone to play Exploding Snap with.”
Harry Potter & the Cursed Child, page 368 of the PDF I just pirated, because, as you can imagine, I don’t own a copy of Cursed Child.
Which is very nice, and never happened.
You know, given that Harry was a) TWELVE YEARS OLD and b) canonically has a “if it didn’t literally kill you it can’t have been that bad” mentality (reread his fight with Ron in Deathly Hallows and tell me I’m wrong, that’s EXACTLY how that thing started, and that was ABOUT GINNY, TOO!), it’s perfectly reasonable and in character that that didn’t happen.
Which is not a good. But it makes sense. And it was worth exploring. At the very least, it was worth acknowledging.
Ginny deserved to have that acknowledged.
*ta[s mic*
J, you’re welcome to disagree with me completely and I’ll hold you in high regard (well, I already do but that’s beside the point!) but I’ve always taken this as a metaphor on how trauma victims are perceived, especially by someone who treats trauma as “if it didn’t kill you it must not have been that bad” mindset and how, if there isn’t performative aspects of post-trauma actions (including one I read from a court case last week where a guy had 7 SA cases against him and the defense attorney mentioned that she was out getting her nails done 2 days after she was assaulted and he blamed her for “not being traumatized enough” so she must be lying.
Harry, bless his broken 12 year old self (and up to and including 17) really was a bit of a knobhead (and kinda self-centered too which is how kids are at that age) in that he’s the unreliable narrator and to him, her appearing “perfectly happy” means it must not have been that bad when it really was that bad and worse.
People die. He gets bent. People are traumatized and it’s a *shrug* (which is a symptom of PTSD/C-PTSD) so for him being the unreliable narrator to see “it wasn’t that bad since she didn’t die” and “she was perfectly happy” when she really wasn’t in the least - demonstrates his myopic viewpoint and a metaphor on how people view others who have been traumatized.
Everything else is on point - the siblings failed her; the adults really failed her; the institution as a whole failed her; society failed her so the only way she was going to overcome it was by herself which seems to be normalcy rather than an aberration, especially for juvenile girls.
Did Jo write it ham-handed? Oh yeah and then some. I have horror stories to curl most talons and make granite weep for what I keep locked away in sharing burdens with others. But to tell someone who was possessed for almost an entire year and it nearly kills her that “she was perfectly happy” seems performative ignorance.
Like a Depressed person can have a good day and look happy and then cease to exist the next - the trauma victim can appear “happy” and be completely broken inside.
It’s a tremendous failing on most people in not seeing the need to help, even if it’s only to make a phone call to get someone the professional help they do need.
Am I giving the Author too much credit? Possibly. But that’s how I always read it from day one - that while she’s learning a new normal and pulling away from those she’s closest to and has complicated feelings towards the same ones who failed to protect her, everyone else thinks it’s NBD since she’s not locked away in the Janus Thickey ward at St. Mungo’s or kept hidden at home or hiding under her covers in her bedroom for good.
“It must not have been that bad if she’s happy right now.”
Yeah, it was fucking that bad and you should acknowledge it.
Thorough and in-depth insight from both of you! Thank you for sharing! When I wrote fan fiction (now eons ago), I challenged myself by writing Chamber of Secrets from Ginny’s perspective. The more I explored her as a character, the more I realized how it would be impossible for her to be “all back to normal” after experiencing such trauma. (As a side note, the writing of that story led me to some pretty dark places for how Tom manipulated and violated Ginny— further proving to me that the possession was much more than just killing some roosters and opening doors for the Basilisk. You only need to see how the locket affected Ron to see how dark Horcruxes can be. I carefully edited it so as to not be gratuitous).
From the little information we get from the books (up until the “Lucky You”), we would get the impression that the kids are alright. But in Ginny’s experience, she has nothing to do but carry on, plaster on the smile because everyone else has. That is why I consider her one of the strongest and bravest of the Gryffindor because she had to do this all alone. Harry is surrounded by people who care for him and support him. He shares with Ron and Hermione. But with Ginny it is unclear who she has as a true confidante. It seems like she has many people who like her in the following books, but does she have any one with whom she can trust with her fears (which would be even more difficult after the last person she confided in used her secrets against her in horrible ways?). I head cannon that Luna plays a significant role here, but I agree that JKR dropped the ball in exploring Ginny further and providing an example of someone who was failed by so many people, but still managed to make it through. That is the main reason I hate how she is portrayed in the movies— as a mere plot device or prop for Harry. She was so much more than that!
And now you can see why, although I would love to write from Ginny’s perspective for Prisoner of Azkaban and beyond, I probably won’t because I don’t think I could do it justice— there is a lot to unpack there.
