A/N: The credit for the Dare to Write challenge goes to Ibuzoo. I want to do all 500 prompts.

This one is dedicated to Colubrina who makes me aspire to be a better writer and a better human every day.

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine, no money being made

1. Vile romance

Tom Riddle x Ginny Weasley

Somewhere in the Middle is a box. In the box is a boy. Outside the box is a girl and wind that spits rain on her face.

It is an old-fashioned kind of story.

The boy sits in the box his hands on his knees, spine straight and burnt back to cold tiles. The box is a dark prison but Tom Riddle is used to darkness.

He uses the time to think. Outside the wind is howling as it does sometimes. Inside the walls weep pure straight lines of clear water. He closes his mouth and bites at the inside of his cheek. His mouth is dry as sandpaper and his skin burns. He thinks of bright eyes and lines on a young face and bloody hands. He sleeps.

The girl stands on two empty feet in a skirt to her knees and her red hair plastered to her cheeks. The smell of burnt flesh is in her nose and her mouth. She thinks. And in her mind she can see dark eyes and pale cheeks and blood sticking to her fingers. Everything is easy when you have the right teacher.

Did he show her enough? Tom is not sure and it is this uncertainty that makes him thirst for her. How much more he could teach her. He bites his lips and tastes the burnt sweetness of old blood. His lips remember softness and taste like petals silk and dust on her skin.

She wept for him. A long time ago, perhaps before she understood. Now there are no tears anymore. She is filled and empty all at once. Ginny Weasley is complete. The seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. She is power and lightning and endlessness. She crosses the water on lighted feet unaffected by the dark creatures around it

His guards fled for her. Tom Riddle lifts an eyebrow. He had not expected that. There is a moment in which the only sound is the scream of a key in a lock. He watches the door part from the wall unaffected. Tom Riddle stands, his dark eyes settle on her live form. He breathes in air filled with her sweet scent. Some part of him hurts, the part that despises the dependency he has on her. He pulls out a lock of ginger, clean hair.

She walks on wounds from long ago and creates new ones. She sees him finally as he has seen her always. She is a monster, and when he parts her tights she bares her teeth and screams.

He smiles.

He did teach her enough.

In the Middle is a box. In the box is a girl. Outside the box is a boy and fire reflected in his eyes.

It is an old-fashioned kind of story.