Ginny stares at the mirror and Tom smirks back at her. The surface is cool to the touch, and Ginny wonders.
"Tom,", she starts, not sure where to begin. She is not the gangly eleven year old who was first possessed, but yet, here he is. "Why?"
"I missed you.", Ginny very much doubts it. Tom blinks, feigning innocence. He was always good at pretending - she would know best, after all.
"Did you?", there's hope because in a way Ginny can't leave her past behind. The little eleven year old had a crush; the not so little sixteen year old harbored it in her chest like a thunderstorm.
"Would the answer matter?", he replies, shrugging. Her fingers move to his face.
"I suppose not."
Silence falls like a cloak between them, a girl and her not-quite reflection. She is not sure why he is there, and Ginny isn't sure if Tom knows too. His hand touched hers, and Ginny would be sure it's his warmth if she hadn't been touching the mirror for so long. She knows, at some level, this is some hallucination, some small shard of Tom who stays with her. Ginny doesn't mind the company.
His breath is in the same rhythm as hers, and they keep their silence, eyes staring at each other.
"Tell me a lie. Tell me one more lie, Tom.", she pleads, and Tom smiles, soft like he had no edges. A lie in itself.
"How will you know I'm not speaking a truth, instead? You know me,", he says, and Ginny stares at him, too tired to fight back, until Tom rolls his eyes. "Fine. I love you."
"I do, too.", it's not a lie on her part. She still loves Tom - the gangly eleven year old who had a pretty boy salvator, who listened to her childish woes and made her feel like the most important person in the world. It's a sick feeling, born out of being the seventh child, not as bright as her brothers, too attuned to magics deemed inappropriate. Ginny touches the mirror, and Tom's eyes - cold and dark - look behind her. She can hear her roommates approaching.
"Time for me to go,", he says, already fading away.
"Forever, I hope.", Ginny never knew her voice could be so bitter. Tom laughs, more of Ginny in the mirror than Tom.
"Not while you're alive."
Tom's image disappears, and Ginny stares at her own self, hair a mess, dark bags under her eyes. Her roommates approach, and Ginny "accidentally" lets the mirror fall, the shards a mix and match of her reflection and Tom's.
"Ginny?", one of her roommates, whose name she can't be bothered to remember, asks, a frown clear in her voice. Ginny doesn't face her. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, sorry,", Ginny replies, Vanishing the shards. "I thought I saw something and let it fall. My bad."
She had seen something, but her roommates had no need to know that. Tom, once again, was her secret.