"One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled, stooped to pull harder— when, sprung out of the earth on his glittering terrible carriage, he claimed his due. It is finished. No one heard her. No one! She had strayed from the herd. (Remember: go straight to school. This is important, stop fooling around! Don't answer to strangers. Stick with your playmates. Keep your eyes down.) This is how easily the pit opens. This is how one foot sinks into the ground."
—Rita Dove "Persephone, Falling" (1952)
Chapter One
Tom Riddle found the anomaly. Of course it would be him who found her, crumpled and broken in a shaft of June sunlight, down a seventh-floor corridor.
He had no business being there, but he couldn't pull himself away. Maybe I should get help, he mused detachedly. It would seem rather odd if the impeccable and esteemed Tom Riddle didn't do anything. But there was nothing to do, really, he decided upon inspecting her. She seemed nothing more than unconscious, but a quick reviving spell did nothing to bring her around again. Something else was afoot here.
She was very small and very fragile, and one delicate hand clutched a wand as though it was a lifeline. The wand was yew, Tom noticed with some fascination—yew, like his own wand, tucked safely in his robes. Her hair was the color of fire, and the sunlight fell into it and made it glow. She was so still, and her eyes were closed. Maybe she's dead, he mused with a twinge of satisfaction. Or petrified. But no: He did not know her, and Tom knew all the petrified students by name. He knew all the students of the school by sight. This girl fit into neither category.
He knelt beside her and turned over a wrist. The anomaly's pulse beat rapidly beneath his touch, but the rise and fall of her chest was so faint that at first he thought it was not there. The color on her cheeks was high, and her skin burned with fever. So not dead, then, and not petrification either.
He sighed. The anomaly would have to go to the hospital wing. Drawn wand focused on her prone form, Tom said, "Mobilicorpus." Then he strode purposefully away, trusting that she floated pitifully behind him.
"Luna! Luna, go back to the Room of Requirement! We can't stay here!" Ginny Weasley shrieked to be heard above the din of grinding stone, tinkling glass, verbal incanting, screams of pain and triumph and loss...
She was scared and overwhelmed by the battle around her—the flashes of multicolored spells, the ephemeral hooded enemies. She darted from one skirmish to the next, cast spell after spell, and even so they kept getting back up. None of this seemed to have any effect on Luna Lovegood, though. She stood, dreamy and half-hidden, behind a crumbling wall.
"Luna, what the bloody hell are you doing?" Ginny asked, shoving her friend aside to send a particularly powerful stinging hex around the corner at a masked adversary.
"I'm sorry," Luna murmured solemnly. She rushed at Ginny and flung her arms around her, held her so tightly that she thought she was going to crack. Her pocket was just a little heavier when Luna moved away.
"Luna, there's a—"
"I know, there's a war on."
"We can't stay here. You-Know-Who's joined the fighting; that's what they're saying anyway."
Luna smiled sadly. "I know," she said again. "I've just met him. He's not very nice."
"He's the Dark Lord! Of course he's—Merlin's beard! Expulso!" She flung a Death Eater backwards, and he hit the floor with a sickening thump. Though Ginny flinched, she was determined not to dwell on it.
"I'm sorry," Luna murmured again. Luna's wand was bitterly cold against her throat, and Ginny found that she was so bewildered by her friend's actions that she didn't move away. "Portus ante-tempora."
"Brax, did you hear?" Orion Black asked through a mouthful of toast.
"Hear what?" Abraxas Malfoy countered with a dainty grimace. It was far too early in the morning for Orion's deplorable table-manners.
"That girl Riddle found—in the corridor? They brought her round finally."
"Really?" His blue eyes were alight with curiosity, and the Riddle in question suppressed a small smirk or any show of agreeing interest. "What did she do?"
"That's the best bit," Black said with relish, and he leaned forward conspiratorially. "She hexed Dippet."
"Why?" Adrian Rosier asked sharply.
"Dunno," Black answered nonchalantly. "Didn't know him and got scared, I expect." He leaned over Tom without a thought and snatched up a bowl of strawberries from further down the table.
Rosier glared. "Attend, Black. This is no way to act in the presence of a lord." His hand slithered toward his robes, as though he was going to draw a wand.
"Y-yes, my lord. Sorry, my lord." Black inclined his head mockingly to Riddle, and Tom glared. The fourteen-year-old was insolent and ill-bred; he would, no doubt, bring nothing but dishonor to his noble and ancient family.
"Anyway," Abraxas said smoothly, "how did she get him?"
"It was the Bat-Bogey hex, I think."
Abraxas sneered. "That's a bit juvile, don't you think?"
"Yeah, I suppose so."
Tom tap-tapped his fingers on the tabletop and thought about the anomaly. It had been late-afternoon on Thursday when he'd found her, and it was Saturday morning now. Until this point, the anomaly had been left asleep in the hospital wing and given no more medical attention than the school's employed Healer could provide. Though she had not seemed injured, the Rennervate spell should have revived her—unless, of course, Tom cast it incorrectly, which was very unlikely. She was in a magically-induced coma of some kind, Tom guessed, and there wasn't much anyone could do about that. Still, he decided with a small amount of irritation, it looked as if they weren't even trying to wake her up. She should have been moved to St. Mungo's ages ago for more professional attention.
"If there are any new developments," Tom said imperiusly, "do let me know. Lestrange, Rosier, with me." And with that, he rose from the breakfast table and strode purposefully to the doors of the Great Hall. He did not wish to dwell oy this when he. Had more interesting things to think about.
Ginny woke up in the hospital wing at Hogwarts, but the people around her bed were unfamiliar and void of concern. And the hospital wing was one of the first places at the school to be destroyed in battle, so the Order had no hope of a safe place to recover. Her eyes snapped open, and she dove for the bedside table, where her wand should be. There it was—cool yew thrummed against her fingers.
"Expel—"
Quickly, nonverbally, Ginny cast a Shield Charm, a Bat-Bogey Hex, and then a blasting curse, all in quick succession.
"Bloody hell!" Someone shouted.
Her heart was racing, and her face felt like it was on fire. The world began to blur at its edges, and then everything went black again. Had she ever really been awake?
"You're a curious thing, aren't you?" Tom Riddle mused in her dreams. Ginny felt his cool, familiar hand against her forehead, and her body shivered in the bed. If she wasn't awake, she wanted to be now.
"Riddle?" Abraxas Malfoy swung his ever-present walking-stick out in an arc, with the hope that Tom would trip and fall to his knees on the cold dungeon floor.
With an amused smirk and a barely perceptable flick of the wrist, Tom sent the cursed cane back to its master, to ram itself against his legs. "Yes?" He answered mildly.
"They've moved her to St. Mungo's. I thought you ought to know." There was no need to mention who "she" was.
Tom inclined his head politely. "Thank you, Abraxas." He turned to go. "Oh, and Brax?"
"Yes?"
"You are losing your touch. I could have sworn, despite that ridiculous crutch, that you were more subtle than this." And this time, he did draw his wand, if barely: The yew poked from his sleeve like a serpent rearing its proud head, aimed covertly at the other boy's midsection.
"Merlin's arse! That bloody hurts!"
The first thing Ginny Weasley did upon waking was to be sick. The second was to try and force her now vomit-covered self upright, and the third was to grope half-blindly for her wand. It wasn't beside her.
She shifted to her other side—never mind that her body felt as though it weighed a ton, or that she was covered in her own sick. She had to find her wand. If it wasn't there... Well. That couldn't be good for her; it meant that the Death Eaters had got her. Where had she been before this? What had she been doing? But her mind was too damned hazy for her to make any solid conclusions about her situation.
"Stay still," a voice to her left tried to soothe.
"M'wand..." Ginny tried, but she trailed off. Even the sound of her own voice hurt her pounding head right now, and it felt as though a wad of cotton was shoved between her lips, filling her mouth.
"I've got it here, on the table, miss, but—"
Ginny didn't let the woman finish, choosing instead to lunge for the wand. Her fingers closed around empty air. Of course they took the bloody thing! She was a prisoner; there was no way her means of escape, her weapon, would be in her reach.
"Here, here... Though you're perfectly safe without it," the woman fussed, and Ginny's trembling fingers closed around the cool shaft of wood. It became easier to breathe then, and she took a long drag of the eucalyptus-scented air.
"Where'm I?" Ginny croaked, before clearing her throat and trying again: "Where am I?"
"You're at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, miss," the woman answered pleasantly, moving to a table of crystal phials, situated directly across from where Ginny was lying.
As the woman mixed one potion with another, then poured a few drops of the new concoction in a small glass, brown eyes regarded her with as much alertness as they could manage. Ginny couldn't be sure, but she suspected something was wrong here. The room certainly seemed genuine, but the beds around her were empty, and the woman mixing potions and arranging pillows seemed too young to have even started her Healer training.
"I took your wand because you kept flinging hexes at anyone who got near you, miss," the Healer said conversationally. "You won't remember, as you were out of it mostly, but you were still cursing like you'd
just come from some kind of battlefield and hadn't done anything else for a long time.
"You know, when you were first brought in, I thought you had come from a battle, but that's ridiculous! Only the Muggles and those on the Continent are fighting the war, and you're not a Muggle and you're not from the continent either; you use our incantations."
"I'm not a Muggle," Ginny confirmed dismissively, but said no more on the subject. She turned her wand on herself and said, as clearly as she could through her cotton-stuffed mouth, "Scourgify."
"No, you aren't, miss," the Healer agreed, and she pressed the glass into Ginny's hand. The glass was filled with an amber-colored liquid that smelled faintly of licorice, and Ginny eyed it mistrustfully.
"What is it?" She asked, staring suspiciously up at the healer. Where she'd come from, to accept food or drink or potion from someone you didn't know was a likely death sentence.
"It's a sleeping draught, miss. You were out of it, but it wasn't with natural sleep. You were in a magically-induced coma, probably due to a poorly-crafted spell. I don't know when the last time you rested was, but judging by my diagnostics, it's been awhile. So I'd like you to drink this potion, miss, and sleep a little, and we'll talk when you wake up again."
The Healer was lying; Ginny could feel it. Her eyes narrowed, and Ginny asked again, more firmly, "What is it?"
"Just a sleeping draught, miss—"
"It isn't. You mixed something else in. I'm not blind. And I'm not stupid. I don't drink unfamiliar, fizzy, smoking liquids."
The Healer was impatient. "I mixed in a simple nutrition potion. We can't exactly get you to eat when you're trying to curse the spit out of us, you know. Now, please don't argue with me, and drink your potion. I promise: I am not trying to hurt you, and when you come round, I'll explain everything to you."
"Good afternoon, Clara." The voice was smooth, and oddly familiar. It made Ginny feel a bit calmer.
Of course she was calmer in the man's presence, for it was Albus Dumbledore. He seemed much younger, yes: the silver beard was now auburn, the nose slightly less crooked and the face was less of a road-map, but it was certainly him. The eyes were still blue and twinkling, and the half-moon glasses hadn't changed at all.
"Professor Dumbledore?" Ginny asked, absently setting the glass down on the table beside her. She carefully propped herself up on the extra pillows Clara had brought and swiped her lank red hair away from her face.
"Ah! You know me, too, then," Professor Dumbledore said, smiling benignly down at her.
"Yeah. Professor—where am I? This can't be St. Mungo's. Last I remember, I was at Hogwarts. And St. Mungo's is—"
"Precisely where you are," came the serene interruption.
"Please, sir. She has to sleep. It's obvious that she isn't thinking clearly." Clara wrung her hands anxiously, and forced a rather harassed-looking smile. It came off as more of a nervous grimace.
"Yes..." Dumbledore cocked a brow in question, and it took Ginny a moment to realize he wanted her to fill in with her name. He was Dumbledore, wasn't he? But he didn't know her.
"Ginny, sir. My name is Ginny." Back in fourth year, their Defense against the Dark Arts professor had claimed that his name was Mad-Eye Moody. By fifth year, everyone knew it had actually been Bartemius Crouch Jr. She wondered what this young-Dumbledore's name would really be, when she learned it.
"Well, Ginny. Sleep. We can talk when you wake." At her suspicious glare, Dumbledore added, "And I'll be right here when that happens." He smiled at her warmly, and it was so heartwrenchingly unchanged, that Ginny couldn't help but trust him. It had to be Dumbledore—the real Dumbledore. Maybe he'd de-aged himself in order to hide from You-Know-Who, she thought rather groggily.
And if Dumbledore, the symbol of hope and namesake of her and Neville's resistance, was going to sit and look after her while she slept, then it must not matter if he did not know her by name. Maybe he'd hit his head. He was good; everyone knew Dumbledore could always be trusted. With a sigh, Ginny let Clara help her into a more upright position and press the glass to her lips. She drank.
It only occurred to her after the draught had slid down her throat, and after she was tucked into the pristine white sheets that she knew this version of Dumbledore. She'd seen him before, and she never, ever wanted to see him again.
The second time Ginny came to, she was not ill. She uncurled from the fetal position in which she'd found herself and reached over for her wand.
It lay, in reach this time, on the bedside table beside her. Ginny picked it up, and held it close to her eyes to examine it. The once-gleaming yew had lost its shine, and there was a small stain of something on the tip that could have been blood. Maybe it was the residue of a darker curse, she thought, and rubbed the stain absently. It seemed that, by the end of the war, every rule of morality she knew had been abandoned or rendered obsolete, and there was no dark magic anymore. There was no light magic either. There was only successful magic, used to beat back the enemy.
"Hello, Ginny. Glad to see you're awake," Dumbledore said, setting aside the book he'd been reading. "Are you feeling any better?"
"Yes, sir," she replied, because she really did. Her eyes were glued shut with sleep, and her stomach was roiling and she probably stunk to high heaven, but she felt more like herself and her mind was much clearer.
"That's good. Madam Cassel will be here shortly to run more diagnostics."
"Oh... All right. Sir?" Ginny asked curiously, and her heart began to flutter erratically.
"Yes?" Came the calm reply. He smiled faintly down at her, and his eyes were twinkling like mad.
"The hospital wing of Hogwarts was destroyed, sir, and no one enters or leaves St. Mungo's without Ministry approval. How am I here? Is the battle over?"
Dumbledore's brows furrowed in query. "Who destroyed the hospital wing?" He asked.
"You-Know-Who. He's finally taking the school like we thought he would after you..."
"After I..." There was a pause, and Ginny realized that she was expected to fill in the blank.
She studied him curiously. The signature twinkle was duller now, the expression was grave and the man's study of Ginny intense. It was obvious that he already knew, or at least suspected...
And yet she had to answer. It made her grip her wand more tightly and stare right back in an outward display of defiant courage, but when she spoke, all that came out was a frail whisper: "Dead."
Professor Dumbledore exhaled, almost in relief, and Ginny didn't realize he'd been holding his breath. He softened somewhat. "Ginny," He began, "you are definitely at St. Mungo's, but something has gone quite wrong, I'm afraid. I do not know the outcome of the battle, or even whom you are mentioning, though you seem to think I do. What is the year for you?"
"1998?" She asked in a small, quavering voice.
"And that is, I think, the bare bodkin of it, my girl. By our reckoning, the year is 1943."
Author's Note: Hello, everyone! It's another new story from the silly authoress with no proper update schedule for her other two! And, surprise surprise, it's more Riddle-related garbage.
I make no promises for good quality, and I offer no apologies on behalf of my incomplete projects. I was bored and looking for inspiration for my other fics and am just running with an old draft I had.
I do not own Harry Potter; J.K. Rowling does. The poem at the beginning isn't mine, either; it belongs to a woman named Rita Dove.
Read and enjoy, and please let me know what you think with a review. I always appreciate them.
—Avra Kedavra