Summary: Sometimes there's a reason to fear the night. Ginny/Tom.
My first Gin n'Tonic fic! I've been wanting to write about these two for ages. There is just something so dark and addictive about this pairing. It will probably be told in about four or five parts, depending on how much this runs away with me.
The lyrics at the beginning are from Mordred's Lullaby by Heather Dale; a fantastically creepy and mood inducing song of twisted love and consuming revenge (and one which makes me very tempted to write a Mordred fic sometime in the near-future, thanks to a recent obsession with all things Arthurian).
Lullaby
Hush child, the darkness will rise from the deep
And carry you down into sleep
Child, the darkness will rise from the deep,
And carry you down into sleep.
Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty, loyalty
Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty only to me…
The First Night
He's there waiting for her as she knows he would be. Tom, her beautiful fallen angel. No longer a boy of paper and ink, but flesh and blood. Real. Alive at last.
She has a vague memory, shrouded and indistinct, of finding herself in the girl's bathroom, facing those serpentine taps, whispering words whose meaning eludes her utterly. Some force within her but not of her had impelled her to evoke those sibilant Parseltongue syllables, opening the way down into her very own underworld.
Hell is often portrayed as a red-hued place of fire and brimstone, but she knows this to be false. Hell is green, hell is dank and chill, a cavernous realm of green mist and stone walls and watery floors, a place where the cold air lays clammy hands upon her skin, causing its surface to pucker in response. She finds herself drowning in this mist, this incandescence, being pulled under to a watery grave, until she hears it at last. A lifeline. Two words spoken in an arrogant, impatient voice that nevertheless has branded itself into her soul.
"Come here."
And Ginevra Molly Weasley obeys.
He unfurls an elegant hand in a lazy, languorous gesture; she finds herself irresistibly drawn towards him.
She's dreaming, she knows this. She is still wearing her nightdress; dank water is seeping through the bottom hem of the translucent material, staining it by slow inches. Her bare feet are numb with cold. The Basilisk might be dead, but that is only a small mercy. It was never the serpent that she was afraid of.
It's like moving through sea mist, pale green and cloying, its damp tendrils entwining her like the coils of a snake. And through it all, his angular figure emerges, relaxed as she has ever seen it, but she senses him watching, waiting. She stares at the alabaster skin of his elegant neck before it disappears beneath the high, outdated collar, the line of his graceful, narrow shoulders beneath the ruffled shirt. Just the same as he had been three years ago when he had emerged from the diary, a fully formed embodiment of everything she hated and most loved.
But I'm not a child any more.
Yes, Tom has certainly seen to that.
In the eerie light of the chamber, his dark eyes have taken on an oddly greenish hue, almost like – but no. Nothing like. Harry's emerald eyes are like clear-cut glass, brilliant and open and heartfelt. The green tint in Tom's eyes is like the surrounding mist, secretive and shrouded, contained and containing. But there's a hunger lurking within those irises that even he cannot fully conceal. Oh, his heart is bleeding for revenge. Fifty years is a long time.
And now, at last, he has his chance.
She can't breathe, she's so afraid. She's faced Death Eaters before, but this is different. This isn't a matter of remembering spells memorised in a Defence Against the Dark Arts club or even fighting behind Harry, for Harry.
But for some reason, she doesn't want to think about Harry, even though he is the only one who probably understands what it is like to be haunted by Voldemort. But Voldemort is a hideous villain, more monster than man, and has no affinity with her handsome Tom.
Perhaps, if she hadn't met Harry, she would have pitied this boy, orphaned and alone. But Harry, who is everything good and pure, despite being raised by uncaring relatives, renders it impossible. No one can pity Tom. He would hate her for even trying.
Up close, his pale skin is almost translucent, and she reflects that even after everything he's still the most handsome boy she's ever seen. We're the same age now, she realises with a jolt.
It doesn't make her any less afraid of him.
"Ginevra." The name is breathed between them, low and compelling. He's the only person who has ever called her that. She remembers how thrilling and grown up it used to seem when she was so used to being plain old Ginny, and she feels slightly sick.
She tries to speak and manages only one word. "How?" The sound of it is thrown around the cavernous walls, echoing over and over. How, how, how.
He smirks, a demon's smile on an angel's face. "Did you really think you could rid yourself of me so easily?"
She shakes her head, numbly. She's never been rid of him, never, never.
His expression becomes musing, contemplative. "I survived, Ginevra, because you did. I poured my soul into you. And so, I brought you here. This place holds pleasant memories for you, I'm sure." His eyes glitter unpleasantly. "It was supposed to be your tomb."
She remembers it even now; the life draining out of her, Tom emerging from the diary and laughing –
Her hand holding the wand is shaking violently; Ginny doubts she'll even be able to point it straight.
"You should be honoured, Ginny." The familiar name sounds so terribly wrong in his cruel, caressing tones. "I was prepared to show you a great privilege, allowing the chamber of my great ancestor to serve as your final resting place. It is more than you deserve, a mere blood traitor brat."
"Yet Harry defeated you." Her voice is hoarse, yet she throws all the mockery she can into it. "Does that still sting, Tom?"
"Don't attempt to provoke me, Ginevra." He merely sounds impatient. "You never could."
The curt dismissal causes her cheeks to burn with humiliated anger. Only he can make her feel eleven years old again. But she's still not willing to back down entirely.
"Harry destroyed the diary," she repeats insistently. "He stabbed it, I saw it bleed –"
"Nothing but ink, you foolish child. Fortunately, my magic is a little more permanent than that."
He moves towards her with a sensual, serpentine grace. She is so enraptured by it that she isn't aware of what he intends until the wand is pulled from her grasp by a pair of long, pale fingers.
"You won't be needing this."
She swallows hard, suddenly feeling terribly open and exposed. His eyes rake over her, relishing in her discomfort.
"Scared, Ginevra?"
"No," she lies.
He laughs at her transparent denial. "Show some of that famous Gryffindor courage."
Courage? Where is it now? She has changed in the last four years, changed so much that even she's ashamed of the blushing, stuttering eleven-year-old she had once been. But now all the things she's become, the things she's striven to be, are meaningless. Her bravery, her passion, her tenacity… it all receded the moment she set eyes on him once more. No one can stand against Tom and win.
No one else can stand against Tom and want to lose.
She shudders.
"My," he murmurs, eyes raking over her, and suddenly she doesn't feel eleven at all. "How you are changed, Ginevra." He taps her wand against the side of his face as he regards her thoughtfully. "And yet… not so very different, after all."
"You're wrong," she says, her voice shaking with hatred. "I am different. You can't fool me like you used to. I know who you are, I know what you are -"
His too-thin mouth is pulled into a smile. "Who said anything about fooling you? I think it's fairly obvious what I want. Don't you?"
She's going to scream.
His light figure moves easily towards her, a combination of lithe grace and predatory resolve. A pale light flares in his dark eyes. Oh, not for her, she knows him better than that. No, he's relishing what he's going to do, this meticulous revenge he has been so long devising.
"I have waited a long time for this moment."
She doesn't beg for mercy. She knows he has none. The gold and black ring flashes in the gloom, a chilling reminder of what he's capable of doing, even to those closest to him.
Especially to those closest to him.
And suddenly, the pain of the old betrayal comes back to her. She remembers it all: honeyed words and poisoned lies and broken promises. They don't understand you, Ginny, not like I do, we're friends aren't we, best friends, and you would do anything for me, anything at all, you'd die for me, wouldn't you, Ginny -
She stumbles backwards, sloshing through the dank water that swirls around the flimsy material of her nightdress. The cold wracks through her body, through her bones, but she doesn't care. Nothing in her brain but run run run -
She has to get back - back up to -
Tom hasn't moved; he's merely standing in the same position, watching her with a kind of malicious amusement.
"Going somewhere?" he smirks.
She stops dead, icy fingers curling into fists as she struggles to swallow down her fear. He knows she can't run from him. And there is no Harry coming to rescue her this time; even he can't save her from her own mind. Just a dream, she tells herself forcefully, just a dream, just a dream -
"You're nothing," she says, with a conviction she does not feel. "You're an illusion, a fantasy -"
She can see she has angered him by the thinning of his mouth into a tight line, but his voice is lazy and deceptively soft. And his slanting eyes hold a strange kind of triumph. "I am everything you ever wanted."
He remembers, Ginny realises, with a rush of furious despair, he remembers how I fell for his lies, how I believed everything he ever told me -
Tom's arms are crossed as he regards her coolly. "Run if you will. Be a little coward. Shame your House. But do you really think you can get away from me up there?"
He has moved closer. Although he has not laid a hand on her, her skin is humming with sensation. Her breathing is thick and heavy in her ears.
"That is not your world," he hisses. His low, mesmerising voice enfolds her like the veiling embrace of the mist; telling her that she belongs in the darkness and whispers and empty spaces. She's shivering violently in her thin nightdress, the gauzy fabric soaked to the knees, rendering it almost transparent. Her red hair is hanging down in damp, snaky locks, the only thing of colour and life in this shrouded world.
She wants to reach out and touch him, convince herself that he too is an illusion, but he isn't faded or blurred around the edges, but defined and solid and so very, very real. Far more real than the memory-fragment that emerged from the diary as her life was bleeding away to sustain his. Her pure blood.
She wonders if he ever appreciated the poetry of it.
There has been something broken inside her ever since that day; a shard, a fragment embedded within her like a Basilisk fang driven through her heart. She has never been able to rid herself of it, only cover it in brittle smiles and sleep inducing potions. And in the above world of sunshine and Quidditch and Sugar Quills, the darkness laughs, waiting, biding its time.
That time is now.
Tom's pale, narrow face is very close to her own. She can see herself mirrored in his dark gaze. The black hair falls into his eyes as he leans over her. She can imagine the feel of the lightly muscled shoulders and arms, the tense strength they are capable of holding.
If she moves just a little closer, she would not need to imagine -
She jumps violently as he uses her wand to trace a slow line along her cheekbone, in a gesture that is somehow as sensual as it is cruel. "No one knows you, Ginny," he says softly. "Not like I do." And she can taste his words: blood and ink and bittersweet poison. Sickness twists inside her stomach, and something else, something cloying and insidious that creeps through her fingers and toes, compelling her to stand and listen to what he's saying and submit to it willingly.
She has poured out her soul to him, and he has never given it back. He is embedded inside her now, running like ink through her veins.
She will never be free again.
Stay tuned for Part II. And review!