This is just something I've been wanting to do for a while. I'm not anticipating it being even remotely long. The parts are quite short, and they'll remain that way.

Note to readers: if you've read my other stories and are reading this because you like them, I beg you not to read this one if you aren't old enough to. It's rated M for a reason.

Disclaimer: I don't own JKR's characters or world.

Prologue

I

Ginny Weasley wasn't afraid of many things. She didn't like thunderstorms much, this was true. But people – no, she didn't scare easily when it came to people. She was a true Gryffindor: assertive, confident and brave. Her long hair whispered of raging fire, her eyes glinted like steel when she was determined, and her posture showed unwavering confidence. It was no wonder that the boys of Hogwarts stood no chance against her. She was a modern lioness, and she didn't play second to any man. She seemed fearless to those around her.

What Ginny kept to herself, however, was that the one person who did have the power to frighten her was the one person she needed to be strongest against. One person had the power to send her stumbling back against the wall, knees shaking and face paling. He was the boy who had kept her imprisoned in her own mind for nearly a year while he used her physical form to commit acts of unspeakable horror against her friends and classmates. During all that, she had felt her mind begin to crumble apart, piece by piece. This year-long series of possessions had instilled a fear so deep within her that she didn't dare mention it to anyone. The complete loss of control she felt was terrifying, and she projected this fear onto the man behind it.

No matter what name he chose to call himself, Tom Riddle frightened Ginny Weasley to death.

Five years later, after the cataclysmic and cathartic Battle of Hogwarts, she still saw him in her nightmares. He often stood over her on the stone floor of the Chamber of Secrets, while she was still on the floor, unable to move a muscle. She was incapable of even protesting against her own captivity, as her voice always deserted her during these nightmares. It didn't desert her in the waking world, though. Years ago, after she had learned how, she had taken to casting a silencing charm on herself each night before she went to bed, lest she dream of Riddle and awake screaming. One or two nights she had forgotten, and those were the nights when she had lied to her concerned mother, saying that yes, she was perfectly alright. It had only been a stupid nightmare, nothing at all to worry about. It happened to everyone, after all.

He would show up looking as he always had when Ginny had seen him in his memories. He was handsome, undeniably so. It was no wonder she had fallen hard for him during her first year at Hogwarts. At the time she had thought that he was the perfect man: handsome, sympathetic, kind, and obviously talented enough to be able to leave something like that diary behind. He was everything her eleven-year-old self could've dreamed of – except of course, that he wasn't Harry Potter. The real boy of her dreams. Strangely though, she found that she wasn't too broken up by this fact. Harry Potter was unattainable. He was a sort of mythical figure in her mind; a mythical figure that she just so happened to have met. She had barely spoken to him, owing to the debilitating shyness that always overtook her whenever he was nearby. But Tom…Tom was there, he would speak to her, and she found that this crippling shyness never occurred when she spoke to him. He was no more intimidating than one of her brothers.

Though, of course, she had never harbored a secret desire to kiss one of her brothers.

When she looked back at her first year, she could see how much of an enigma Tom had remained. Whenever they had corresponded – for that was the best way she could think to describe it – the topic of conversation had been focused on her: her life, her troubles, her feelings and dreams. He had rarely revealed anything about his life. She now knew that his act had been perfectly designed to draw her towards him. She was an egocentric little child, focused entirely on herself. She had felt alone in this new setting, away from her parents for the first time in her life, and her brothers had been treating her less like a sister and more annoying little girl. It was understandable that she had been miserable and lonely. Riddle had seen that loneliness straight away, and he had taken full advantage of it. She hadn't even noticed that she knew virtually nothing about him, as wrapped up in her own problems as she had been.

When her first year had ended and Riddle's (for she couldn't bring herself to call this boy Voldemort) memory had been destroyed, she had felt a tinge of sadness along with the relief that came from having her own body back. She had spent the year developing a bond with this boy and, as shallow as the bond may have been, she had neglected many other potential relationships for it. She had decided that the next year she would make up for this reclusiveness. Upon returning to Hogwarts, she greeted everyone she met warmly and confidently. Eventually this confidence and charisma became more than a façade that she hid behind. By the time she had reached her fourth year at Hogwarts, she had become the true picture of a Gryffindor. She was dauntless and beautiful, and the boys clamored over her. Through all of this, she didn't forget either of the boys from her first year of Hogwarts. She still secretly revered Harry, and she still lived in terror of the memory of Riddle.

As the years passed, her beauty grew, and her relationship with Harry blossomed. The day he had kissed her had seemed to draw out a part of her life that she had neglected until that point. At that moment, she had finally felt like her life was complete, and that her unfulfilled dreams had pushed their way into the open. The feeling had disappeared when Harry, Ron and Hermione had set off on their unknown mission. Her nightmares, which had disappeared during the time she was with Harry, returned as soon as he had left. She expected them to disappear again once the war was over and Lord Voldemort had been defeated. When he came back to her, she felt that finally her life would be peaceful. It would be a new beginning.

Her dreams, however, had other plans.

II

In the middle of the hot July night, Ginny Weasley awoke in a cold sweat. Her eyes didn't immediately adjust to the darkness, and in the period between waking up and being able to see her surroundings, she thought she saw the faint outline of a person hovering near her bedside. When she turned toward the figure, still too terrified and too disoriented to reach for her wand to create light, its shadow seemed to flee as her gaze reached it. She blinked several times, trying to speed up her eyes' adjustment, but she could see nothing where the shadow had been. By the time she could clearly discern the outlines of her furniture and wall hangings, her heart had slowed and she had managed to convince herself that the figure had only been a remnant of a nightmare that she now couldn't remember. This had been happening more and more frequently. She had been having these nightmares and waking, trembling with a cry upon her lips. But when she tried to pull the contents of her dream from her subconscious, they seemed to flee, just as the imaginary shadow had fled.

As a precaution, she pulled her wand out from where it was resting under her pillow and muttered a spell that caused the tip of her wand to ignite. She regretted it for a moment as it temporarily blinded her and caused the fear that always came when she was blinded to come swooping back. She held her hand between her eyes and the wand to cover the worst of the light, and surveyed her room carefully. The schoolbooks she had dumped in the corner after the year's end were still piled haphazardly against her trunk, which she still hadn't finished emptying. The sleeve of a blouse that she rarely wore was hanging out of the side of the trunk. She was about to put extinguish her wand's light when she noticed something she hadn't noticed before.

Not daring to crawl out from under the covers of the bed, as irrational as she knew she was being, she edged closer to the foot of the bed to get a better look at the sleeve hanging out from the trunk. Near the hem was a reddish-brown stain that looked remarkably like blood. Ginny gulped involuntarily. That blood could've come from one of many sources. There wasn't even a guarantee that it was her blood. After all, to say that the previous year at Hogwarts had been chaotic was an understatement. It was completely possible – no, likely – that the shirt had gotten stained during one of the many small fights that broke out in the castle. There was no reason that she should be frightened by one little bloodstain.

And yet, she found that she was. She couldn't help feeling that she had dreamed of something like this, but she couldn't pull out any image that even remotely matched what she was focusing on.

She scooted back towards her pillows, extinguished the light from her wand and plunged it back underneath the pillowcase. Then, after pulling the blankets quickly up to her chin, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to clear her mind before imagining Puffskeins jumping over a fence until she fell back asleep.

This story will be a bit more freeform than my other ones. I'll be jumping around when I feel like it, and the parts will be generally shorter. That said, I hope you enjoy it, and please review.