Ginny gave a silent nod, a lump rising in her throat as she tried to believe the words her son was saying. It wasn't her fault. She'd heard those words a thousand times since. Especially in the months following. How she was only a child and how she couldn't have known better and how at least she was alright and everything would be fine. It was hard to remember those things. It was hard to hold onto those things when Tom Riddle was still haunting her dreams. Poisoning her mind. Harder still when the image of him sitting on the end of that very bed was so...real. She could've reached out and touched him.
"The diary...it took pieces of me. And I didn't get all of them back. And those missing pieces make it hard to--" She made herself a little smaller, curling into herself a bit. "It's hard to be brave without those pieces. It's hard to remember that I'm strong." This was probably the most she'd talked about that incident since her third year. Mostly she'd tried to shove it all down deep inside of her. It worked with varying degrees of success. Until now that is.