Written for the 2nd Blindfolded Competition: Round 2
Theme: Inverted Favourites
Round limitations:
· Pairing: Tom Riddle/Ginny Weasley.
· 1085 words
· Prompts: Charms, the fire is lit but the cauldron's empty.
Love is Like an Empty Cauldron
To make a successful potion, one needed the perfect fire. Size, color, temperature: the minor details of the flame decided whether one's attempt was liquid magic or a lucky concoction. It might not require ingenuity but certainly skill and patience, both of which Tom had in abundance.
He opened his potions kit, neatly marked "Tom Marvolo Riddle", and arranged two sets of ingredients. Lazily, he commanded Mulciber to bring him the other materials needed to make the love potion Slughorn had assigned to them. There was a grunt from his neighbour before Mulciber wandered off to fulfil his duty.
Tom sneered at Mulciber's empty cauldron already on the heat: how wasteful. By the time Mulciber added water, the cauldron would be too hot and the potion would weaken. All that time would be wasted while cracks formed on the overworked cauldron bottom and by the end of the lesson, the cauldron would break. Would the idiot never learn?
A flick of his wand caused a flame to ignite under Tom's cauldron, already filled with water. The flame was just the right shade of scarlet and within a centimetre from the fire, Tom could feel its heat. Perfect for such a simple potion.
Mulciber dumped the new ingredients on their table and Tom swiftly arranged his on the side. Tom's knife descended on them, the work mindless enough for him to focus on his bigger problem: Ginny Waverly.
The redhead was an enigma and not one he particularly liked. Ginny had transferred into Hogwarts in her sixth year, an unheard of occurrence spearheaded by the ever twinkling Dumbledore, whose involvement was alarming enough. The smug git never broke the rules, never bent for another's wellbeing and yet here he was, assisting a penniless, abandoned girl. Of course, Dippet couldn't be bothered to care, if his blubbering explanation during the Sorting was anything to go by.
"Be careful on those grackleroots," Slughorn said as he passed by.
"Thank you, sir," Tom replied, a smile pasted on his handsome features until the blowhard had left.
Sheep, sheep, sheep. His knife smashed free the life fluid of a flobberworm. How dare Slughorn correct him? His roots were perfect (except for the one which was a few millimetres short, but he wasn't going to use it anyway)! Another flobberworm turned to mush. How dare Dumbledore make an exception for her? Two more worms disappeared beneath his blade. How dare Ginny Waverly turn down his help in Charms?
The red flame flickered as he added the roots to the cauldron. Grey swirled into white and he returned to his supplies.
Ginny was a mere Gryffindor but within the month her name was already being said in his presence. Her background was also suspect. He had found no prior record of her anywhere. Her red hair, freckles, temperament and nearing-poverty wardrobe were hallmarks of a Weasley but none recognised her. Yet strangely, she sometimes responded when the name 'Weasley' was called. A distant relative in disguise? A bastard? A descendant from a Squib?
No matter, he decided as he finished preparing the ingredients and added some more to the cauldron. He would find out her secrets soon. People like her needed to be taken in hand quickly.
He fetched a new cauldron and asked Slughorn for several rarer ingredients. The potion master beamed eagerly as he fetched them, not caring that his prize student would be making another potion in class time. While Tom waited, he read over the blackboard instructions again with a smirk.
When bringing an unruly woman to heel, there was nothing like love to set the record straight.
The new ingredients were produced and Tom surveyed them critically. There were many options open to him, not the least of which was a very strong love potion. But what fun would that be? Why make a potion when his own charms could suffice? Ginny may have turned down his one attempt at winning her good graces, but there would be others.
Alternatively, he could make a poison. It could be far more entertaining to kill off her rising star, especially with all of her popularity. He always did prefer Margareta Marigold for the next Head Girl and it would be one more win against Dumbledore (falsely smiling, sparkling bastard who didn't give a damn about anyone). But who would Tom blame the death on? Perhaps one of her fanboys…
He automatically added the last of the ingredients to the love potion, not bothering to watch the mixture turn the light pink it was meant to be. He had finally decided on the second potion he wanted to make and set about prepping the remaining ingredients.
Ginny was not like the other sheep, at least not on the surface. She was a cauldron set to boil on a pink flame: so much potential but weak at heart. And while she was as doomed before him as the rest of her gender, the fact that her cauldron held anything at all was worth an iota of effort on Tom's part.
He would let her taste the power of unreflecting love, he decided as the new potion bled red into black over an emerald flame. This new concoction would give his enemies powerful nightmares and, if given the time to mature, even provide daylight hallucinations. A few drops in Han Atem's pumpkin juice would make Ginny the permanent Seeker on Gryffindor's team, a call that Johnson, their misogynist team captain, would never otherwise make. Ginny's gratitude would be the start of the one-sided relationship Tom intended to have with her.
Mulciber yelled suddenly as his cauldron broke, yellow liquid splashing onto the floor. Tom's swiftly-cast Protego protected him from the weak substance that only a nitwit would be influenced by. As if on cue, three girls start cooing at Mulciber, declaring unreal affection through pouted lips. Pathetic.
Tom ignored the squawk-fest caused by his grunt's utter ineptitude as he mentally mapped out the final stages of his plan for Ginny. He only paused to draw out the required amount of his love potion for Slughorn to grade and made the rest disappear. The empty cauldron seemed to be the perfect metaphor today: Ginny's soon-to-be affections for him would bring only ruin to her.
He set the cauldron aside and turned to watch the red flame dance for a few more moments. Powerful but hardly the strongest. Bright but not the most brilliant. Pretty but far from dazzling. With one hand, Tom snuffed it out.