Random bits of two separate stories, but with the same basic idea.
1. Grey Area
The shadows hide my face as they have always done, and, far too often, my intentions. Even, sometimes, from me. As I sit and watch their perfect light world and pretend that I am part of it I watch and learn. And one lesson that has struck me the most are the lies people tell themselves and believe. They say they fear the dark, but after spending so many years hidden in the shadows I know that is not it. It is the monsters that lie await in the darkness that they fear. Thusly, it is not dark magic they fear, but those who wield it.
I should know.
My first and most foolish thing I will admit to only myself is my infatuation with Harry Potter. He blinded me to the darkness with his scorching white light. It was whilst I was blinking away the last of the light that I fell straight into the jaws of one of the monsters everyone fears, hidden so well by the shadows.
Tom Marvolo Riddle. In one year he showed me everything. He showed me spells darker than my worst nightmares and ways of manipulating people that even the majority of Slytherins would be repulsed by. But by that time the darkness had swallowed me whole and I was less disgusted and more… compelled to learn more. His own manipulation of me, I knew. He showed me the pleasures of the body before I was old enough to truly understand them. He, of all people, showed me what love was and the difference between it and lust. He lusted after me, I loved him.
But Tom made mistakes. Tiny little slips of the hand that I didn't even notice until many, many years after the diary was destroyed and its owner killed. And I only recognised them then because though they provided the opening for his original destruction, it also produced a chance to bring him back.
Blood sacrifices, as the name might indicate, are morbid things. Made more so by the necessity of emotional link between the sacrificed and those standing by. The one dying had to be a loss to those benefiting for the magic to reach full expectations. There is only one thing that I know of that will fool blood magic and that is - blood magic.
Do you understand yet? Tom tried to sacrifice me - an effort I was willing to make - in return of his own life. But the kind of magic he was doing was deep blood magic, older than the hills and possibly older than Merlin himself. It was magic of the Ancients, an exchange of one life for another. But, though I loved him, he had no attachment to me other than his wishing to possess my body. So the magic was null - void.
But Tom, despite his little mistakes, was brilliant. Blood magic to fool blood magic; blood for blood. I searched Slytherin's private library under his instructions and I found it. A spell as old as the hills and possibly as old as Merlin himself. Magic of the Ancients. Binding one life completely and totally to another; both could live on without the other, but no other union would be binding. A marriage of blood. A marriage that could not be dissolved, not even by death.
He bound us and I wrote the words in his diary and lay down, preparing to die.
When I woke again, Tom was gone and Harry was there, blinding me again. Blinding me to forgetfulness. I remembered none of the past year; none of what Tom had said and taught and done to me. For years, another eleven, maybe twelve years, I remembered nothing but tiny snatches of the past at odd points in time. What I saw scared me - terrified me.
But, there is a saying that the brightest light burns out the quickest. In dear Harry's case, this was true. He was the purest, the lightest, the most Gryffindor of all of us. He loved me fiercely, with all that light burning through me until I knew that I had to love him in return because it was right. For eleven years until the light began to fade.
The first through fifth years were the fight against Voldemort and his death at the end. Sixth year was relearning and living the lost years; rebuilding old homes and old relationships and learning how to start over. Seventh and eighth year Harry and I worked our separate jobs and came home to the same flat and learned how to love each other again. Ninth year we married aged only twenty and twenty one. No one thought us too young. Tenth year darling, baby Lily was born. Eleventh year Harry was hit by a slow acting water-earth curse and he began to fade.
The twelfth year spelt the end. I remembered more and more and the cloak of shadows I'd had wrapped around me for so long. As each tiny bit of light fled Harry's dying body I could see a little bit more. He pretended it didn't matter that he was dying - that the frantic researchers would find something in time. He went on as usual, loving me in the fierce, gentle way of his and bringing up our baby daughter like he wished he had been brought up.
And I pretended, as I became aware of the darkness that smothered me, that I shared blood with, that I didn't care - couldn't care.
It was only when Harry had faded nearly out of existence that I saw the answer. The answer to all my problems. Harry's heart and Tom's brilliance. Harry's light and Tom's dark. Harry's bravery and Tom's perseverance. The two men I loved and could never, even though I pretended, never have.
All wrapped up in one man. Two bits of souls sewn together to make the resemblance of a whole one.
2. Seven Sins of Darkness
No act goes unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small.
Belief is truth held in the mind; faith is a fire in the heart.
Laugh at impossibilities, And cry it shall be done.
Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.
The slowly fading light turned the small clearing turn gold, then red, then purple until, finally, the sun disappeared over the horizon and the area was bathed in cool blue darkness.
Ginny sat in the very centre of the clearing with her eyes shut and her legs crossed and she waited.
She waited another two hours before the full moon finally broke over the edges of the trees and crowned her in silvery blue light. Then her eyes snapped open and she got, a little unsteadily, to her feet. Ginny rubbed her legs softly, encouraging the blood to flow back to them, and pulled the things needed into the right position.
The candles; a glowing ring of precisely 37 grey-blue made from wax infused with ground lacewing flies. They were not yet lit, but still they glowed. Like his eyes; like cats' eyes in the darkness, daring, threatening, entreating, forbidding. Exactly as they were supposed to be, more ethereal than the ghosts that still haunted Hogwarts castle, but Ginny would not think on that. Would not think of her years – seven years of her life! – wasted within those walls.
On the ground was what looked like sand, and there was no way of telling what it was. But it burned, when you touched it. No one could approach Ginny and she could not move more than to stand or sit without moving the 'sand' or having it eat away at the flesh. And scratched into that sand, barely visible where the grass grew through it, was a pentacle.
A five point star that was forbidden in the magical world because of its potency. Even the muggles knew of the power of the star. They feared it, worshipped it aside the heathen and, impossibly, drew it out and stuck it all over their gift cards and festive decorations. Ginny had feared it for so long, like any self-respecting witch. Then her eyes had opened and she realised that it was her David's star, leading her through her life. Leading her to a man with all the power of a God.
And Harry had snatched him away. Thinking she was dying. Thinking he was saving her. Thinking it was all for the greater good. Ginny had believed it at the time. She had believed in the greater good. Believed in it until Harry forsook her for another woman and couldn't even look at their only child without a shiver of disgust or reaching for his wand.
So Ginny took little Lily away and they hid from the world; a world whose wrath, like Harry's, had turned on lowly Ginny Potter. And Ginny remembered the name she had been born with, the name he had given her. The name that her first true love had bestowed upon her in the middle of pitch black night when the sky was a void and her heart was empty.
Riddle.
Voldemort.
Lady Voldemort.
The power she had felt made up for the lack of heart. The lack of heart made it easy to give her life to him. And she had forgotten it all until Harry had sworn to kill her and Lily had found, in a tattered, beaten box, underneath her bed in the housing Malfoy had provided, a tattered, beaten diary that hadn't quite died.
And Ginny remembered it all, now. It had been a little comfort, a gift from him, to be unable to recall it; to think she had been forced to do things she had chosen to do of her own volition. She remembered writing threatening messages on the walls in fresh, warm blood. She remembered learning to speak snake tongue – not just a few words, the entire language. She remembered Tom – darling Tom – take her down in to Slytherin's layer and bind them there, together, sharing one name and one power.
She remembered the oath she had taken. She remembered offering her life for his, and his oath to bring her back when he was free. She remembered the solemnity in his eyes and she had given him her life freely. And, when Harry had arrived he had died and let her have her life as it was supposed to be. Always, he had forced a scapegoat upon her and she had taken it without choice, willingly.
Until now.
She had loved Harry. Lily was proof of that. She had loved her family and she had loved her friends. But they had decided to turn from her. And until she had found the diary she didn't know why. Her family, her friends, her Harry – they were repulsed, like two negative end of a magnet, from anything dark. It was nature.
But Malfoy... Malfoy bathed in it. Lusted after it. He had taken Ginny in without payment of any kind and she had wondered why. Draco had offered nothing but an enigmatic smile and a pair of rooms where within just happened to lie Riddle's diary. Malfoy had been faithful. He had tried to kill Dumbledore. He had tried, repeatedly, in the face of great – almost ridiculous – adversity, to kill Harry. Then he had lied and paid his way out of prison.
Ginny had hated Draco Malfoy, his pretentious little wife and their blonde little brat of an offspring. But then Lily had found her the tattered remains of the diary and Scorpius had shown her the expansive Malfoy library and Ginny had found what she needed. Astoria had found the clearing and the day and Draco had found the ingredients. And Ginny had pulled enough of the diary together to feel the edges of a tiny piece of battered soul.
Now she was sewing that tattered soul back together.
The Malfoys and Lily were waiting back in the mansion with a small collection of close... acquaintances, all of whom still loyal to the dream that the Dark Lord had presented. They were waiting for his return.
Ginny stood in the centre of the perfectly circular clearing, in the middle of her pentacle, in the middle of the circle of unlit yet glowing candles. She took of her shoes and, like an inexperienced tourist who had nonetheless prepared themselves for the pain, she stepped out of her space and walked across the flesh eating sand. Now only he could save her. The sand would eat her away until there was nothing, not even bones, left. It would only stop if fully destroyed. Which could not be done without a wand. And for the sake of the spell Ginny had had to leave hers in the care of her daughter, so only if the spell worked and he was summoned would she be saved. But Ginny had no doubt in her skills.
Her step was unhurried, in spite of the limp she quickly gained, as she walked slowly around lighting the thirty-seven candles one by one, chanting under breath. And what words. Words of demons and devils and ungodly things. Words that, like thread, stitched his soul together, stitch by stitch, word by word. And as the sand ate away she could feel him. Feel him come alive again.
The souls of her feet were completely gone by the time the first, ghostly spectre flickered into vision. It was gone mere milliseconds later, but she was just coming to three quarters of the way around the circle. A light, a candle, a flicker. A light, a candle, a longer flicker. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four.
'Ginevra?'
Three.
'Ginevra?'
Two.
'Ginevra?'
One.
'Hello, Tom,' she smiled, the extended use and need for magic that the candles and the pentacle demanded were draining her and she hurt, but by Merlin it was good to see his face again.
But the spell wasn't done, so she flickered a smirk and placed a single finger to her lips to show she needed quiet. She drew, in each triangle point of the star, a rune. A rune for solidarity, for mortality, for death, for strength and, finally, for love. As the final flick of her finger finished the sign she collapsed, finally letting the curling blackness at the edge of her vision take her and the sand to rise to absorb her.
Ginny knew there was a very high probability of her death. She also knew that she, alone, had brought Voldemort back, she alone had made the sacrifice and she alone would be rewarded. Whether it be her or her daughter didn't matter. Because Tom was back and, she could feel, more powerful than ever.
~~A good man is not a perfect man~~
When Ginny woke again she was still in the clearing. She cared for naught but the fact that she had woken again.
'Ginevra,' his voice said, dulcet tones speaking in a language so many – too many – had forgotten.
'My Lord,' she replied on a hiss, delighting in finding she had not forgotten the language he had taught her.
His eyes were a dark, violent crimson more terrifying than the bright red they had become by his downfall. More terrifying as they had a depth to them now that he seemed, before, to have lost. More terrifying because they were, now, set in features entirely human. That handsome face and lock of hair falling into his eyes and an ever-present smirk that she responded to without thinking.
She was held in his arms away from the sand and he tilted her until she stood, once more, on two feet. In the tiny area she had left in the centre of the clearing they stood pressed close together, close enough to note the subtle, as well as the obvious changes.
She, before, had been younger – a mere eleven years old – but now she was twenty six, ten years his body's senior. Still she stood several inches short of him, but her hair had darkened and now curled attractively around her shoulders. Her body, thin, wiry and angular before was now curved and lightly muscular from puberty, Auror work and carrying a child. He... other than his eyes, he had changed none from the sixteen year old boy he had ripped off and placed in the diary's pages almost seventy years before.
'Ginevra,' he whispered, long, nimble fingers tracing the shell of her ear, her jaw line and tilting her face up ever so slightly. It was a threat and caress as one.
'I said I'd bring you back, did I not my Lord?' she replied, both hands lying loosely, flat on his chest.
Voldemort chuckled, a laugh that thrilled Ginny and sent shivers down her spine. 'But you helped rid of me,' he replied. 'I took what was mine and left nothing for you to remember. You could not know. And still you keep your promise. Your loyalty is astounding.'
Ginny looked up at him unblinking. 'Gryffindors are fickle friends and lovers, Tom,' she said, her tongue flicking our across her lips to wet them as she waited in anticipation for his return.
'You dare call me, Lord Voldemort, Tom?' he hissed at her, reverting back to the snake language that they had, at some point, slipped out of unconsciously.
One hand raised and she grazed it up his throat until the scar cut across her palm long ago rested against his cheek. 'I call my blood bound by his given name. Though,' she added, eyes sparkling with wicked glee, 'I have no problem calling you my Lord.' She stood on tiptoe and hissed the last by his air, causing the loose strands of hair to flutter on her breath and gooseflesh to appear there.
Voldemort's arms moved around her and pinned her against him. 'Ginny,' he said with a slight nod of his head, smirk gracing his lips. 'How clever of you to remember.'
'For my part in your downfall I can only say it was minimal and I was playing the part you crafted for me long ago.'
'Yes, my loyal little lion.'
'Loyal?' Ginny laughed humourlessly as she thought of all those lions and what their loyalty had proven to be. 'It's the badgers that are loyal, and well I know. Would you like to see?'
She opened her mind to him and he plunged in. It was little more than a rape of her mind, but Ginny perversely enjoyed it, gaining her own insight by plunging into his mind as it tore through hers. She shuddered against him, clutching at his robes as her knees weakened, her eyes darkening as she drew her lips to his, devouring them and tasting him properly at last.
Fifteen long years that she hadn't even realised had been torturous until now, when she knew what she was missing. Fifteen years of being bound in blood to the Dark Lord trying to control the wizarding world. The sense of loss she had felt at his downfall she had believed to be the loss of so many friends and family. Now she knew that it was loss of him.
'You have a daughter by the brat who killed me,' Voldemort snarled, the light amusement previously in his tone now utterly diminished.
But Ginny did not back down. 'Potter can sense dark magic like we sense power. After spending nearly a decade of his life with me and giving me a daughter he was repulsed by us. He could not look for flinching, could not breath for snarling. I am not ashamed to say I loved him. I am not ashamed to say I have a daughter by him. He bathes in the strength of his magic and my daughter exudes strength in a way that would put fear of her into the very heart of Dumbledore.'
Voldemort hesitated, seemingly on the brink of destroying Ginny. Then, after a moment, 'take me to her.'
Ginny smiled gently. 'I have no wand,' she indicated the sand. 'My life, as it ever did, rests in you hands.'
He looked – just looked at her. Then, in the blink of an eye, they were gone.
1. Written: 1st September 2009
2. Written: 5th March 2009
Chance of completion for both: nil
Feel free to use this piece of writing for whatever the hell you want, so long as you credit me (either this account or my main one - Calistabelle) and let me know what you do with it.
Much love,
Cal