As Black As Night
She dreams of hands as white as snow.
The rest of the world is pitch black, but those hands are always there, shining brilliantly within her field of vision, and they reach for her with a cold possessiveness that she craves, she thinks, more than she fears. His fingers are long, elegant, tapered, his palms unlined, his knuckles smooth, and his skin is white, so white she wonders for a moment whether he is the one who is dead, after all….
And she cannot see her own hands, cannot see anything in this black confusing afterlife, but she can see his hands, and she watches him pluck an apple out of the nothingness, and with a sickening spiral of horror, she realizes.
An invisible mouth takes a bite.
She cannot breathe.
Far away, there is triumphant and terrible laughter.
Ginny opens her eyes and finds herself face-to-face with Tom Riddle, and relief floods her veins.
His face is colored with kind concern—it is an expression she knows well, one she has seen him wear all her life. She struggles to swallow. Speaks. "Tom?"
He lets out a breathless little laugh. "It worked."
"What worked?"
"I don't believe it." His black eyes snap to hers. "You're alive."
She crinkles her eyebrows. It only now occurs to her that she is lying on her back, in some kind of bed. Unease prickles at her scalp. "Of course I am."
He extends a hand. She takes it and lets him pull her into a sitting position, and then a tight embrace. "You weren't."
"What?" But it's all coming back to her—the fear, the apple, the dizziness, the blackness. She sways.
"Princess?" Tom pulls back, holds her gently at arm's length. For the first time, she takes in the sight of him: hair as black as night, high cheekbones, a glimmer in his dark eyes that makes something she can only describe as excitement spill into her gut. He is exactly as she remembers. "Are you all right?"
She closes her eyes. A million scenes play through her mind.
She is eleven years old when Tom Riddle comes to Grimmauld Palace to work as an apprentice for the royal potions master. He's only five years older than she is, but already very serious, very ambitious, and she is too young to brew but not too young to tag along with him down to the dungeons and watch unabashedly as he leans over a hot cauldron and flicks hair away from his face….
And when she saunters over to see what he is concocting, and she slips on the damp dungeon floor and tumbles to the ground, it is his hands that catch her, his voice that murmurs are you all right, his eyes that meet her own as they scan for any sign of tears, and her heart swells with innocent and thrilling affection….
"Princess Ginevra?"
She blinks hard. "What happened to me?"
She isn't sure why she asks the question. She already knows the answer.
Tom presses a cool palm against her cheek. She fights the urge to lean into his touch. "You've been dead for seven years, Princess."
She is twelve and tagging along after him, sneaking with him into the armory, following him around the royal orchard, discovering his secret passageways and hiding places. The other servants no longer tolerate her—the maids have expressed their displeasure with the way she's always tearing holes in her stockings and getting mud on her gowns, and the kitchen staff won't allow her to set foot in the scullery after the incident with all the toads—but Tom is patient with her. He always waits for her to catch up, and he never tells her to leave, so she clings to him the way fire clings to kindling, and she whispers to him one night that he is her only friend….
"Dead." Her voice shakes. She clenches her fist and resolves to sound stronger. "How did I die?"
"It doesn't matter." He swipes a thumb across her cheekbone. "I brought you back. You're safe."
She looks around. She recognizes these walls and windows: this is her chamber at her family's summer palace, The Burrow. It's not far from where she had fled after her stepmother had begun to plot her demise.
She is thirteen. He tells her he is inventing a potion that induces a sleep deep enough to make the drinker appear dead.
She is fourteen and her mother is poisoned.
"I've kept your room just the same at Grimmauld Palace," he says, stroking her cheek gently. "Queen Bellatrix wanted to change it, after you ran away, but I wouldn't let her."
She is fifteen and her father marries a lady-in-waiting named Bellatrix, and suddenly Ginny is being watched. There are whispers of an uprising. The royal advisor is assassinated; Tom is promoted to take his place while Ginny dreams of blackness and hands as white as snow. She hides from the new queen and mourns for the old one, and she dreams of Tom and Bellatrix in the royal orchard whispering secrets to each other, and for the first time in her life she is jealous….
"Is my stepmother—"
"Dead." Tom's eyes seem to harden when he says the word. "Died just after you did. Grief-stricken, they say. Threw herself off the north tower."
She is sixteen and her father boards a ship bound for the kingdom of Durmstrang.
Tom gives her the news four weeks later: the ship went down in the Black Sea.
"So who's been ruling the kingdom, Tom?"
His eyes are black as night. "As the royal advisor, it seemed only right for me to take over," he says finally.
She realizes that she has been lying in a coffin.
She is seventeen and Tom tells her to run.
"She's been having dreams."
"What kind of dreams?"
"Dreams about you."
Ginny tries not to look afraid. They are meeting in the royal orchard in the middle of the night, voices hushed to a whisper, no witnesses but the full moon overhead. He is the one who has called this meeting—he is the one who has shaken her awake, pressed a finger to his lips, beckoned for her to follow him.
She always follows him.
(There is a spark of hope in her chest that this midnight meeting might be for something different, something more, but it quickly fizzles and dies.)
"What kind of dreams about me?"
Tom glances around, makes sure they are alone. "She looks into a magic mirror, but it reflects your face, instead. She asks it why. It speaks: 'I show not your face but your heart's desire.'"
Ginny wrinkles her brow. "I'm her heart's desire?"
"Not exactly." He exhales and looks over his shoulder again. "She wants to be the ruler of the kingdom."
"She already is."
"For now. But you outrank her. A princess by blood has more right to the throne than a queen by marriage, and when you come of age, you'll take over. As long as you live, she will never have absolute power."
Her blood runs cold.
He swallows. "She asks the mirror what she must do. It tells her to seek the one with the hair as bright as fire." He reaches toward her, tucks a strand of red hair behind her ear. "The eyes as green as jade." She blinks the eyes in question. "The blood as pure as snow."
Ginny trembles. "She's going to kill me?"
He nods slowly. "She's asked me to poison you."
She cannot help the cry that spills from her lips.
"You need to leave." He stands, offers her a white hand. She takes it. "Run far away, and don't come back."
"What if she comes after me?" Panic is rising in her chest.
"I'll tell her I've killed you and disposed of the body." He seizes her face between his palms, somehow gentle and fierce at the same time. "I will not let her touch you. Do you understand?"
She nods.
Hesitantly, he brushes his mouth across hers. "Go. Before it's too late."
She fidgets with the edge of her gown. It's dusty and wrinkled—the by-product of being worn for seven years—but she cannot bring herself to look at him.
"The apple."
"Pardon?"
"I ate an apple."
He sighs. "I know." Tracing a finger down to her chin, he tries to tilt her head up. "She flew into a rage when she found out you were still alive. I tried to stop her. I told her to leave you be—told her that as long as you stayed away, the people wouldn't question her right to the throne." He licks his lips. "But her dreams—"
"No."
"No?"
She finally meets his eye. "I know the apple was from you."
She turns eighteen.
An apple appears on her doorstep.
It's a delicacy she hasn't tasted in months—the only place in the kingdom that is permitted to grow apples is the royal orchard, and she misses the sweet taste, the satisfying crunch.
There is no doubt in her mind that Tom is the one who has delivered this gift. He has remembered her birthday, has snuck away to leave her a token of friendship and love, has reminded her that he is watching over her.
She smiles wistfully and sinks her teeth into the fruit.
She sways.
He falls silent.
"Tell me the truth." Her voice sounds thin, quiet. "Did you try to kill me?"
He shakes his head.
"Then why—"
"She wanted me to poison it, but instead I infused it with the Draught of Living Death." His face is serious. "Remember that one? It puts you into a sleep so heavy you appear to be dead."
Every fiber of her being aches to believe him. She sucks in a shuddery breath. "But why leave me asleep for seven years?"
"I couldn't let Queen Bellatrix find out—"
"Queen Bellatrix died right after I did." Her voice is hard. "You already told me."
He raises an eyebrow. "What are you implying?"
Her heart pounds. "I've been having dreams of my own."
She is asleep. The world is black. She dreams of hands as white as snow.
His hands pour a vial of clear liquid into her mother's goblet before dinner.
His hands wrap around the throat of the royal advisor, and then they pass a bag of gold into the palm of a ship captain on the shores of the Black Sea.
His hands rest on Queen Bellatrix's waist before shoving her over the edge of the north tower.
His hands seize the crown and lower it onto his own head.
His eyes are unreadable. "You don't know what you're saying. You've been asleep for a very long time, Princess."
He reaches for her. She flinches away.
"Ginevra. We're friends."
"Tell me why you waited seven years to wake me up."
"I didn't—"
"Tell me!"
His eyes flash. "I think you already know."
She is asleep and he is ruling her kingdom.
He starts a war with Durmstrang and loses badly. His people are slaughtered. The ones who do not die are starving. The ones who do not starve are furious.
They say he is unfit to rule—that he is not of royal blood, that he was never a king, that things were better before, that nothing has gone right since Queen Molly was poisoned and King Arthur drowned and Princess Ginevra disappeared, and they call for his head.
He cannot have that.
He drafts a proclamation. "Let it be known throughout the land of Hogwarts that the long lost Princess Ginevra of Grimmauld Palace has been found—not dead, as so many had feared, but cursed to sleep a thousand years. The royal healers have determined that the only cure to this terrible enchantment is true love's kiss. Therefore, whichever worthy hero can wake our princess will have irrefutable claim to her heart, to her hand in marriage, and to the throne, and he will forevermore be the rightful king of the land."
The world spins.
"You gave me…true love's kiss?" she whispers.
His face is calm. "Well, not exactly." He holds up a small vial with bright green liquid inside. "I just poured the antidote down your throat, instead. But the rest of the world doesn't have to know that."
"So." She spits the word bitterly from between her teeth. Her blood is on fire. "You murdered my family, you stole my kingdom, and you made up a lie to force yourself into my bloodline."
His expression is frozen, stony, and his eyes are as black as night. "My, my, my. It seems that seven years asleep has driven poor Princess Ginevra mad."
Her stomach tumbles. Her world is a fiery blur of fury and terror.
"Interesting to know that the Draught of Living Death gives the drinker dreams about the brewer's true whereabouts." He sounds bored, as if they are conversing about the weather. "I'll have to take note of that—you're the first person who's been exposed to the potion for such a large span of time. Very good for research."
"Did Queen Bellatrix even hate me, or was that a lie, too?"
He smirks. "She certainly never wanted you dead. But you ate it all up, didn't you? 'Hair as bright as fire, blood as pure as snow.'" He lets out a cold laugh. "I still remember the look on your face when I fed you that line. The pride. The satisfaction. You were so desperate to be important."
"That's not true."
"Poor Princess Ginevra. Always in trouble with the staff, always forbidden from playing with the other children because they simply weren't good enough for her." He clicked his tongue. "You clung to the first person in the world who would give you the time of day, and you never once questioned whether I had ulterior motives."
"Shut up."
"And I rewarded you for that trust, didn't I, Ginevra? I saved your life. I had the opportunity to kill you every single day from the time you were eleven years old."
She wants to strike him, to claw at his face, to scream at him, to force him to go back in time and make it different—
"We could do great things together, you and I."
"I will never—"
"Of course, if you insist on being difficult, I'll be forced to tell the world you've gone insane from all your years of sleep, and they'll lock you away somewhere where you aren't a danger to yourself anymore." He leans forward. She refuses to back down. "The choice is yours, really. But the kingdom is waiting, so I would appreciate a quick answer."
Her lower lip trembles.
He grins and presses a white hand to her cheek.
"Very good, Princess."
He leans down the rest of the way and presses his lips to hers.
The contact burns like fire.
She closes her eyes and prays it's a dream.
Quidditch League Round 5: In A Dimension Far Far Away
Holyhead Harpies
Word Count: 2501 (MacBook Pages)
Beater 1: (Dream Sequence Dimension) Write about a dream that continued happening even after the character woke up.
1.[Word] Fire
6.[Pairing] Tom Riddle/Voldemort x Ginny Weasley
15.[Color] Black