Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all his canon characters belong to J. K. Rowling and her publishers. I'm just having fun here.

Author's Note: This fic was inspired by a prompt in anythingbutgrey's "The Very End" Potter!Wars comment ficathon on LJ. The prompt was a poem: Mad Girl's Love Song, by Sylvia Plath (which you can find at the end of this page, as it's longish). The OP asked for a Harry/Ginny fic - but the poem seemed like the perfect Ginny/Diary!Tom Riddle description to me...

Pairings: Ginny/Tom Riddle, Ginny/Harry, past Ginny/Neville

Era: Next Gen (post-Epilogue)

Contains lots of angst and all kinds of mindfuckery, including an implied panic attack and considering suicide.

A Perfect Life

Mrs. Potter, the wizarding world agreed, had it all.

She was good-looking and healthy, happily married for over 20 years now, had a nice home, three promising children at Hogwarts, and a huge, loving extended family.
She had fought valiantly in the Battle of Hogwarts when still a minor, taking on legendary duelist Bellatrix Lestrange herself, but came out of it physically unscathed. Besides being a wife and mother, she had built not one, but two successful careers of her own: when she appeared in public together with her husband, there were always Harpies' fans that remembered her time as a pro player and asked for her autograph first; and her Quidditch reports sold "Daily Prophets". The "Prophet" paid her well, and with her own income, her husband's Auror salary and the substantial fortune he inherited, she had money enough to spend.

Mrs. Potter also had dreams.

Dreams of a black-haired boy with dark eyes and a mesmerizing voice who had lived in a diary; a boy she had told all her secrets.
She was only 12. He had first stolen Ginny's trust, then her free will and innocence, her mind and almost her life. He had made her do Dark things she couldn't remember.

Had there been dreams, too? There must have been, for among the few images she could recall was the Boy cuddling her at night, whispering to her.

Trying to break free had nearly cost her life. Harry and the phoenix had rescued her, and Dumbledore prescribed "bed rest and a mug of hot chocolate". And that was it.

There were no further examinations, there was no questioning. Back then, this was a huge relief for Ginny, but in hindsight she thought it strange how quickly everything was assumed to be normal again.
Only Madam Pomfrey asked more questions than usual the next few times Ginny had to go to the hospital wing for a burns ointment or some flu potion: Did she have a good appetite? Did she sleep well? Ginny reassured her she was okay. The last time Madam Pomfrey had asked, around the time of the Yule Ball, this was already a lie.

For the dreams had returned. The Boy visited her in her sleep, mocking and teasing, promising he would come back.

After Cedric's death, the dreams became more frequent and more vivid, and what happened in them changed.
Sometimes Ginny woke up with faint scratches or bruises, never in places she couldn't have reached herself, and her roommates complained about her tossing and turning and making noises. So she habitually cast Muffliato on her four-poster's curtains before she went to sleep.
A part of Ginny was afraid of the dreams, but there was another that welcomed them all the same. What the Boy did to her, what he made her do and feel was so very different from what the shy kisses and clumsy touches of her first boyfriends did. She never even thought of comparing these things.

When she started dating Harry, the dreams ceased. Only much later it occurred to Ginny that this was the time when Harry's connection to the soul the Boy was a part of was at its strongest, but she chose not to dwell on it.

During the months of Voldemort's reign, Ginny hardly dreamt at all.

And the pale, noseless creature with the glowing red eyes she saw during the Battle looked nothing like the Boy.

The first days after the Battle, Ginny felt numb and detached. There was too much to process: grief over Fred's death; trying to comfort her mother, her father and her brothers; Harry being alive and back; the strange emptiness now the fighting was over; the uncertainty what to do next.
And there was something else she never told a soul: a deeply hidden shame.

The Dark Lord didn't look like the Boy, it was true. But watching the final duel in the Great Hall, Ginny suddenly recognized him by the cut of his jaw, the way he moved. But he never looked her way, and for an insane moment all she felt was disappointment, for he hadn't come back like he promised.

Not for her.

All their friends thought of Ginny and Harry as "an item" and expected them to continue their relationship like they had never been separated.
It wasn't easy for both of them to learn that it didn't work that way: their feelings were still there, but they seemed to belong to two Hogwarts students who hadn't lived through a war – and those children were gone.

They had to find out who they were now first, and it took them longer than they had thought, almost two years. But when they got together the second time, they knew what they were doing, and that it was the right thing. They even managed to keep it a secret from the family and the reporters for a few months, thank Merlin. To Mrs. Weasley's barely concealed displeasure, they lived together in Harry's house in Godric's Hollow for a full year prior to their wedding.

Harry had always wanted a family of his own, and Ginny, who had given the matter much thought (unsurprisingly, she had more realistic opinions about what raising children meant than most of her friends), agreed.
Quidditch was a very physical sport, so she took a break from playing when she got pregnant with James. And then Albus came along; Ginny's Quidditch column had become popular, and she and Harry wanted a daughter, too. Plus, the Harpies were playing a lousy season that year, so officially retiring as a pro player and becoming a full-time journalist was a good solution to her conflict of loyalties.
There was much work, with their careers, the children, the friends that came to them for advice and help. But they were still young and had lots of energy, and while those were challenges, they weren't of the kind that left people dead.

As long as the children were little, Ginny, like most wizard parents of her generation, had bad dreams every other month or so: she knew her children were in danger, but was unable to reach them.
She could often hear the Boy laughing at her; or he was suddenly part of the crowd that blocked her way. That was when she woke up with a start, but Harry was there to hold and comfort her and tell her everything was alright.

Those were good years.

Ginny loved all her children equally. The brothers were constantly bickering, sometimes trying even Harry's patience, but Ginny pitied the outsider who mistook this as a sign he could get between them. In this, her sons were true Weasleys.
James was still growing, but already as tall as his father. Ginny often thought Harry would have been exactly like him, if he had had a normal childhood: James was honest and brave, loyal to his friends, had a great sense of humor and was even a bit of a prankster, but not a malicious one. In school, James excelled in those subjects he had talent and interest for, but was content to do "just okay" in everything else.
Lily, on the other hand, seemed to have kind of a secret competition going on with Al; their goal being to get as many "Outstandings" as possible. Her daughter's quick wit, strong will, curiosity and cheerfulness reminded Ginny of her own younger self.
And Albus… Al was probably the smartest of the three, and even more into books than Lily. His parents were puzzled when he was sorted into Slytherin, because the Hat thought he was ambitious: Al had never wanted to be at the center of attention. Finally, Ginny realized Al had a quiet determination not just to be recognized as his father's son or James', the popular Quidditch player's, brother, but for his own achievements alone. He was also a little strategist, and loved playing Wizard Chess. He'd already beaten his Uncle Ron a few times.
But Al was a good kid, and everybody said he was his father's spitting image, even if his hair was a bit wavier, and he alone had Harry's green eyes.

Still, once during the Christmas holidays, when Al sat in a corner of the living room, wearing one of his old school sweaters and working on the "Prophet" crossword, his face turned away from the light, his eyes looked much darker, and reflections from the fireplace made the faintest hint of a glow appear in them. It wasn't his father Ginny saw then.
Without Al noticing, she managed to retreat to the kitchen and pour herself a glass of cold water – from the tap, as her hands were trembling too much to cast Aguamenti. When she had calmed down enough to go back, Harry, James and Lily had come in from their impromptu Quidditch match in the yard, and Albus was laughing with them, his green eyes sparkling.
It had just been a trick of the light.

Sex with Harry had always been good. He was an attentive lover, tender, giving and warm, and had great stamina. Occasionally, he could be deliciously playful.
But he couldn't take Ginny to that dark place where pleasure and pain and madness and lust all became one, the place where feelings were so intense she was in danger to lose her very self and still enjoyed it, the place the Boy had taken her.

She was well aware her husband would do his utmost to satisfy her needs, if she just told him about them. But Ginny didn't believe it would work: for of all the people she knew, Harry had the least Dark in him.
The only time she had ever come close to that sweet, dark madness while awake had been at Hogwarts, after Luna was taken, in those few winter nights she and Neville, out of hunger and desperation, took refuge in each other.
But Neville wasn't the Snake Slayer anymore, not to mention as happily married as Ginny was. Now, he was just who he had always wanted to be – mild-mannered Professor Longbottom, herbologist.

One Monday morning, working on an article, Ginny had the house to herself. With the children at Hogwarts, this wasn't unusual: Harry's job often lead him away, for a couple of days or a week at most, just like Ginny's own did. Still, it had been new to her at first: even in Holyhead, she had lived in a manor magically converted into small apartments for players; they shared the huge, elf-run kitchen, and the dining hall had been sort of their Common room.
By now, she had learned to love the peace and quiet; but on that particular day Ginny would have preferred Harry's company and input to it, for she had trouble writing.
The match she wanted to report about had neither been very good nor spectacularly bad; there had been hints of both teams working on new strategies, not fully realized yet; several young athletes had shown promise through small actions. But those had been subtle moments, easy to spot for the watchful eye of the expert, but hard to explain to the casual fan. She had observations written down; she didn't have a Story yet.
All of a sudden, it occurred to her that her own life had been a gripping tale into her early twenties. Now, it was more like a series of well-crafted, but unassuming vignettes, too. Or maybe a painting in muted pastels, as opposed to the glaring colours and stark lines of her youth. It was an odd, random thought out of nowhere that made her smile wistfully. She chided herself for getting so maudlin; and immediately after she got a good idea how to handle her report. She finished it quickly and to her satisfaction, and owled it to the "Prophet".
That night, for the first time in years, the Boy returned to her.

Harry laying next to her kept the Boy away.
But whenever Ginny slept alone at night, in her own bed or in a wizard inn somewhere, there was a chance he would visit her dreams. And it was raw and exciting and intense, like all those years ago. There were moments Ginny felt more real, more alive than she did in waking.

She wasn't easily tricked anymore; she knew he was full of deceit. She noticed over time he tended to stay longer, and to talk more.
He told her he'd been never far from her, and never would be, whatever she did. That all those who had known him were dead or had forgotten – all but her, just like he were the only one left to know the Real Ginny.
She noticed what he seemed to want the most: he coaxed, and begged, and commanded her to do one thing, something she had never done since the diary's destruction – to call him by his name, just once. She didn't, and when he persisted, she forced herself to wake up, but it seemed to get harder every time.
One night, Ginny came close to saying it. It was the Boy's sudden, triumphant grin that held her back at the last moment. She bit down on her lip. so hard she drew blood, and it worked. She jerked awake, the Boy's voice still ringing in her ears, with an unintelligible curse or just a mindless roar, she wasn't sure. Head spinning, she sat up, grabbed her robe and wand and stumbled downstairs.

In a corner of the kitchen she sat down on the floor where the charmed, hollowed-out board was, a secret Harry knew nothing about. Beneath it, a vial was hidden. It contained a thick, lead-gray liquid: a potion to give a quick and painless death.
Ginny had brewed the potion herself, in late autumn during the Voldemort War. There had been three vials, one each for the leaders of the DA.
Luna had looked at hers, silent, for a long time. Then she had just said: "Thanks, but no", and given it back. They hid it in the Room of Requirement, just in case, so it was probably destroyed.
Five years after the war, Neville, in a letter, casually mentioned he had just destroyed his. Ginny didn't touch the subject in her answer, and he had never brought it up again.
Ginny had always kept hers. A few simple wand motions and a single spoken word – the name she had given a childhood toy, easy for her to remember, near impossible to guess for others – would open its hiding place.

She sat there, silent and alone, until the early dawn. Then, she gripped her wand tightly, but didn't raise it. Instead, she stood up and straightened her robe.
She wasn't a coward. She was Ginevra Potter, War Hero. She had a perfect life and could muster the courage to continue living it.

The End

Author's note:

Here's the poem by Sylvia Plath that was the original prompt:

Mad Girl's Love Song

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again
( I think I made you up inside my head)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moonstruck, kissed me quite insane
(I think I made you up inside my head)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said
But I grow old and I forget your name
( I think I made you up inside my head)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
(I think I made you up inside my head)