Chapter 3
May 1993
After Ginny Weasley was rescued from the Chamber of Secrets, somebody came to Professor McGonagall’s office to meet her, who I couldn’t have mentioned in my original books. That person was Andromeda, who Mr and Mrs Weasley thought it would be good for Ginny to see after she had been kidnapped, taken to the Chamber of Secrets, and almost killed. Andromeda agreed to start seeing Ginny, whose therapy sessions I also listened in on but decided not to show in my books—because Ginny’s parents (unlike Harry’s) were still very much alive and would get revenge on me if I publicized their daughter’s story. As with Harry, I snuck into Andromeda’s office in my beetle form.
Andromeda Tonks: Of course, she’s only reporting it now under the influence of Veritaserum. I am completely shocked to hear that Harry Potter isn’t the only patient of mine whose privacy has been violated.
Rita Skeeter/J.K. Rowling: …but then the Weasley family won a large pile of gold—700 Galleons, to be exact in the Daily Prophet Grand Prize Galleon Draw. The Weasley family didn’t actually use most of that gold on a trip to Egypt to see the eldest Weasley brother, Bill—not all of them, anyway. Andromeda talked them out of taking Ginny with them, and convinced them that one of the Weasley parents had to stay at home with Ginny and take her to see Andromeda once a week. It was clear why this was necessary when Ginny was regularly reporting traumatic flashbacks of her kidnapping; after each one of these, she thought that Tom Riddle (her kidnapper) and his Basilisk were coming to harm her entire family. I couldn’t report anything about Ginny’s trauma in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets , obviously (which is why I said instead that she “was perfectly happy again”), when her parents would make sure I faced justice for what I did. Sure enough, in the present (2007), Andromeda threw some Floo powder into the fireplace at Flourish and Blotts bookstore, shouted, “The Burrow!” disappeared into the fireplace, and came back with both Weasley parents. They took one look at the parchment on which my Quick-Quotes Quill is transcribing these very words, and they were furious. Mrs Weasley said, “How dare you exploit our family tragedy! Ginny was the daughter I always wanted—the daughter I got pregnant six times for, including once with twins! Can you imagine how devastating it must have been to think that I’d lost her?” Andromeda said that Ginny’s brother George, who was managing his joke shop elsewhere in Diagon Alley, also had a right to know what I had done.