Title: Black Cobalt (1/1)
Author name: Opal Ember
Author e-mail: opalember@yahoo.com
Category: Angst, a smidgen of Romance
Keywords: Ginny, Riddle, Voldemort
Spoilers: CoS
Rating: PG maybe a PG-13

Summary: It's his eyes I remember the most

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and
owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to
Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros.,
Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is
intended.

A/N: I hope you all enjoy this little plot bunny that hopped into my head on
the subway. Dedicated to every person on the Younge subway line who gave me
bizzare looks when I muttered "Huzzah!" to myself when inspiration struck
;-) Thanks to lily celesta potter for beta-ing.

Feedback is appreciated, coveted, and generally deified...

Enjoy!

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BLACK COBALT

It's his eyes that are the most different. In my mind, they are always blue.
A dusky, brooding, mysterious blue. The blue of the sky at midnight and the
sea during a storm. A blue so dark it was almost black.

The eyes that are calmly and venomously gazing at me now are nothing like
the eyes I knew. The eyes in front of me now are red and narrowed, with gash
like slits where the pupils should be. I know I'm cornered; I know there is
nowhere I can run; I know that barring some miracle, I am going to die here.
My life will end in the middle of this forest, in the middle of this war.

He doesn't know who I am. I am just a little girl standing in his way,
another obstruction on his course. Who am I but one person in the thousands
left dead by his reign of terror, his paths of blood. He doesn't know that I
knew the former him. That I once spent hours each day spilling my heart to a
memory of his sixteen year old self. That that same memory controlled me
into following out its evil objectives. That I once thought myself to love
that memory of a person.

I never had anyone to truly talk to until I found Tom Riddle's diary. Being
the youngest child of seven -and the only girl- makes it near impossible to
find anyone to talk to. Of course, my mother always claimed to be ready to
talk, but something was always keeping her busy, be it Charlie falling off
his broomstick somewhere, or Fred and George turning Percy's quill into a
fish. And what brother would want to make the time to talk, really talk to,
his little sister? Even at Hogwarts, the place where I always expected to
find so many friends and companions, I was lacking someone to confide in.
Imagine my surprise when the first time I wrote in my diary, it wrote back.

How could I have guessed that in confessing my secrets I would bring forth
so much pain? I thought that speaking the truth was supposed to obliterate
wrongs, not to create them. For the longest time, I thought that I was
luckiest girl on earth, having a charming, receptive friend to carry around
in my pocket all the time.

I never suspected a thing. I was so naive at the time. In the 5 years since
I first wrote in that diary, I have seen many things I would not have ever
thought possible. Death, destruction, and loss have all become parts of my
daily life. I am wholly changed from the person I was when I put quill to
paper in that little book. The person I am now would never have trusted the
words spreading on the page from a hidden source. The person I am now would
have caught on that something was amiss before anyone had been harmed.
However, I am the person I am now because I did not distrust the secret
words, and because I could not stop or understand what was happening to me.
I became distrustful and guarded after the events in the Chamber of Secrets;
I appeared the same on the outside, but I had learned never to share my soul
ever again. Eve those you thought you loved can hurt you in way that are
unimaginable.

And now I am standing before the person who did that to me. Well, not quite
that person; the person I knew, the Tom I confided in, the person I loved,
the thing that controlled me, was only a memory. But the man in front of me
now created that memory.

I wait for the words I know are coming. All I can do now is wait the handful
of seconds it will be until my life is extinguished. I think one last time
of all those minutes spent channeling myself through ink into that diary. I
think one last time of the dark cobalt eyes turned crimson by years of
ambition, power, and hatred. I close my eyes and I wait.

"Avada Kedavra"

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This fic has ended