A/N: this is actually an English project. I love GATE, I can write fan fiction for English. This might've had more kissing and whatnot if I wasn't planning to hand it in, but then again, the very beginning isn't really the sort of place you'd put that. Not in this story, anyway – but it was going to be more violent with possible decapitation and/or dismemberment, but I again, I was handing this in, and I think elegant!Ginny who doesn't want to make a mess is much more plausible and scarier than penchantforviolence!Ginny. Anyway. This has illustrations, because that's just how I am.

http://www.mediaminer.org/fanart/view.php?id=121840

http://www.mediaminer.org/fanart/view.php?id=123128

http://www.mediaminer.org/fanart/view.php?id=125943

http://www.mediaminer.org/fanart/view.php?id=126872 - also the cover.

Very sorry if this is bad, I'm not really a writing type person. But I try. Occasionally.

Dark Queen

She pulled the dress over her head, straightened it out, and laced it up. Ah, how she loved magic, she didn't need any assistance getting dressed. Normally, she wouldn't have minded asking one of her dorm mates, but now was not the time to have anybody seeing her – which explained the very strong magical lock on the door.

The dress was long, and black - sort of - It looked a dark purple-red when the light hit it, and it wasn't the sort of dress you could buy at Madame Malkin's. It had been a present she'd gotten at age eleven, from her sixteen-year-old companion. Then first he had given her. There had been more, and most of those were attached to the dress – burnished silver objects, some with some sort of unholy potpourri in them, smelling sweetly like blood. Dark Artifacts. She smoothed the dress out, and arranged all the bits of jewelry of all kinds hanging off of it. She turned and walked to her trunk, tapping it three times with her wand. Silver markings all over it glowed, and part of it fell away to reveal a jewelry case. Some of the necklaces in it were stolen. Most had been gifts. Virginia couldn't have afforded any of these- she had come from a desperately poor family. But all of that was far, far behind her, getting further every second she continued to get ready. She placed the rings on her fingers, looped all the necklace round her neck, tied the ribbons to her dress and her neck and arms, and put the bracelets and arm bands on.

She moved to the mirror, which was too shocked to say anything, and brushed her hair, which was like blood and sunset solidified. She tied the top of it back with a black ribbon, to keep it out of her face as she flew. She pulled on her black boots, did up the silver buckles, grabbed the silver handled broom and flew off into the night.

Hours later, she landed in a little graveyard. It was Halloween, and, for the past three years, everyone in Little Hangleton had kept doors and windows shut and locked whenever they could – that incident in which some men had apparently killed a boy had turned them off walking around the streets after dark. Ginny laughed cruelly at this. The Ministry of Magic had, of course, placed memory charms on all residents of the town, but they had been aimed at changing the memory, rather than erasing it. This way, if the charms failed, people would already know about the dead boy, and would be able to write off the lights the people might remember as either overactive imagination or something strange the murderers had been doing. It had been done to make the little magical omissions from their memories as logical as possible.

What it meant to Ginny was that no one was around to notice as she put her hand above one of the graves – one belonging to one Tom Riddle, and stood very still, looking straight over the headstone. After long seconds of standing like that, she flicked her wrist upwards and some grey powder flew into her hand. She tucked it away in her billowy skirts, remounted her Nimbus, and kicked off into the night again.

What a feeling, she thought. She could feel the magic she was about to do in her blood, and she clutched at the green, teardrop pendant around her neck, just like his eyes. For the rest of the flight, she was reveling in the wind, the air, and the energy. She didn't care who saw her, because from now on they'd be seeing a lot more of little Ginny Weasley anyway.

A small figure, dressed in black, trod proudly up the three low stairs into Voldemort's audience chamber, and, as she walked into his antechamber, Voldemort looked up. Fresh meat.

            "Who," he asked, "are you?"

            "My name is Virginia Weasley. I have something to show you. I'm sure you will find it very interesting."

            Fresh meat and free entertainment, no complaints from Voldemort's end of things. Really, he did need something to take his mind off the whole pesky Harry Potter business. And then he could kill her, and the blood of a virgin – and she did so look like one – was even better than unicorn's blood for the constitution. "Alright. I am waiting."

            The girl curtseyed politely, but her eyes were cold and mocking, which he found very amusing. This was going to be a blast. He watched as she produced a mortar from her skirts and put a handful of dust into it. "What is that?" he asked.

            "Bone of the Father, my liege." She answered. Voldemort did catch the cutting tone, and decided this was getting to be more fun every moment.

            She brought the mortar up to her face and kissed the dust inside. Then she held out her hand, in a fist, over the bowl. Red liquid began to spill between her fingers and into the bowl, and the smell of magic billowed up to fill the entire hall. Voldemort became slightly faint, but he attributed it to the smell. Very slowly, his faintness grew, but by this time he was too caught up in watching her, her flame hair crackling around her. He seemed to have dim, outside-himself memories of someone who looked like that … and then the world became black and he fainted.

            As he slumped into his throne, Ginny let her fingers unclench and smiled, and brought a small knife to her left palm, bleeding for a few seconds on top of the other blood, for binding purposes. She then unclasped the pendant from her neck, kissed it, and dropped it into the mortar. After rummaging about for a while, she pulled a pestle out from the folds of her dress and, in one, big motion, brought it down on everything in the mortar. As the pendant broke into a billion powdery fragments, they were caught in an invisible current – that of the magic – and rose up to form the figure of a boy. At first, he was smoky, but gradually he solidified, into a living, breathing human male. When he became a corporeal being, he smiled at Ginny. "You've done it, my love."

            "Yes, darling, I have."

            His smile widened, and he put his arms around her, looking about the room. "That must be Voldemort – don't tell me I got that ugly."

            "Yes, you did. But don't think I would stand for that."

            "No. Is he-"

            A sinister, amused smile spread across her face. "Oh, he's alive – but only just." Both of them chuckled quietly.

            Voldemort knew, now, as he came to. Ah. But he had been so blind. Of course he should have never created another self, because another self would not want to share or to submit. Now he couldn't do anything about it, either, he had been defeated – at least he had fallen to the most powerful wizard that ever lived, if that was any condolence. Then he saw himself reach out his arm, palm up, and clench his fist. Dark light began to congeal around his hand, and Voldemort felt his life ebbing away. The last sound he heard was his own soft laughter.