PART II - Window to Your Soul
Chasing Midnight
The next time Ginny saw the perfect couple, they didn't seem quite so perfect.
He was standing alone in the astronomy tower, deathly pale under the moonlit rays. His head was bowed as he stared down at the black-bound book that lay open in his hands. The pages were blank, the most visible thing in the midst of shrouded shadows.
"Dance by moonlight," he murmured aloud to himself, and Ginny felt an acute ache pierce her at the soft words as they echoed around the circular walls. Memory stole through her, haunting remembrance tainted with melancholy. Twilight promises whispered under the allure of darkness. But he had lied, for she hadn't danced, she had drowned, was drowning still…
Tom moved forward until he stood at the stone ledge. In the nocturnal stillness, he could have been standing at the edge of the world. Below him, far below, the Hogwarts grounds lay open at his feet. The diamond blue of the still lake, the dark forest stretching into the distance. Remote and so terribly beautiful. Sudden terror seized her that he would fall and she wanted to call out, to warn him. He couldn't fall. Not him. Not Tom.
"Familiar," he muttered, "But why -"
"Tom."
Ginny spun round. There, framed in the doorway, hair forming a brilliant halo around her face, stood Druella. She possessed none of the grace and poise that Ginny had noted before so enviously; her expression was wild, fevered, her eyes too bright. For a moment, Ginny just stared at the tableau the two of them made, still and silent, divided across the stretch of room. Pale, so pale, like the ghostly lovers of a thousand years ago. She shivered, recalling the story Luna had told her once of Helena Ravenclaw and the Bloody Baron. Was this girl going to meet her death up here? Would Tom murder her and smile that cruel smile even as she lay bleeding, silver blood staining the stone floor as it stained his soul?
But Tom merely sighed, impatience evident in his voice. "What is it?"
"We need to talk."
He didn't even turn around, but continued to gaze out over the moonlit grounds. "I'm busy."
"I don't care." She moved towards him, fists clenched at her sides.
"You'll cause a scene," he said carelessly. "Or is that what you want?"
"If it'll get you to listen - Tom!" Her voice abandoned the hush whispers they had been speaking in, rising to a near-shriek. "You'll talk to me now -"
In a swift movement, he had turned and pinned her against the wall, one hand resting on the stone mere inches from her waist. Druella's eyes had gone wide in startled surprise; she was breathing hard. She looked both sickly and mesmerisingly otherworldly. Ginny knew what must have happened, knew it just by looking. The girl had given Tom everything she had and burned herself out until only a brittle shell remained. Ginny knew that emptiness well, had been there herself. Had never left.
"Well, lover," Tom said quietly. "You wanted to talk. Then talk."
Druella lifted her chin, sapphire eyes desperate and furious. "What's going on, Tom? First you ask me to be your girlfriend; then you just brush me off like I'm nothing when you don't want me around. When I talk, you don't hear a word I'm saying -"
Tom's other hand, holding the book, slammed hard against the wall above her head. Both Druella and Ginny jumped. His pale face was as calm as ever, but his eyes were blazing. "I'm listening now, aren't I? Does that make you happy, Druella? Or did you want something more? Did you want to see how far you could push me? Do not attempt it. You wouldn't want me to hate you. Trust me."
"How can I trust you when you don't tell me anything?"
"Why don't you ask me what it really is you want to know?"
The girl drew a deep breath and looked him straight in the eye. "Is there someone else? I'm not blind, Tom. I've seen the way Walburga Black looks at you -"
He laughed, and Ginny winced at the sharp cruelty in the sound. "Jealousy? How very beneath you, Druella."
"I know something's not right. And I want you to tell me. Otherwise I'll -"
"You'll what? Leave me?" His lip curled. "I'd like to see you try."
"I will," she said, but her voice wavered, uncertain.
Tom smiled, long fingers tracing the line of her jaw. Ginny thought again of a cobra toying with its prey. "You couldn't. Though I think I would admire you more if you did."
"You don't love me," she said. "I know that. I'm not entirely naïve. So why -"
"Because right now I wish to have you with me," he answered simply. "And -" his voice dropped to a whisper, "Something tells me you don't mind that too much…" His hands slid downwards, curving around her slender body and tracing slow patterns through the material of her robes, dipping into the shadows of her waist until she shuddered an exhalation.
"Don't…" she breathed in half-hearted resistance. Tom only laughed and drew her into a swift, possessive kiss that she made no attempt to fight, only this time there was something cruel in the detached passion of his caresses -
Ginny gasped. In an instant, Tom had spun Druella round until they both stood on the outer ledge of the astronomy tower, the darkness of the night open at their feet, a yawning abyss. The wind whipped at their hair, black and silver, dark robes swirling around the two prone figures, stark against the moon.
"Tom!" Druella gasped. She twisted against him, but his hold on her must have been relentless. His voice was almost drowned out by the howling wind, but Ginny moved forward until she could hear every word, spoken with a calm, cold certainty.
"So you would leave me, then?" Tom lifted his face and Ginny realised he was laughing, laughing at the at the dizzying drop, so close. The moonlight fell across the aristocratic planes of his white face; he looked like an avenging angel. "I don't think so. Not you, Druella, you would never have the strength. You would stay if I wanted you to." He gazed impassively all the way down, then back up again, close enough to murmur against her ear. "I think you would even fall, if I wanted you to."
"Tom -"
"Tell me," he insisted, his pale hands curled around her shoulders, just one push away from a fall that seemed endless. "Will you walk, Druella, or will you fall? Or will you stay with me?"
Druella's eyes were closed, tearstains glittering on her hollowed cheeks. "I'll stay," she whispered against his shoulder. "I'll stay with you, Tom."
When he finally stepped back inside, Druella was breathing heavily, clinging to his slender shoulders like a drowning mariner might grasp at a lifeline. Tom looked down at her, lazy, amused.
"Go back to the common room, Druella," he said.
She hesitated. "Won't you join me?"
"Later." Satisfied with her submission, he was cool again, indifferent. He stepped away from her, arms crossed.
But not before she noticed the book he held onto so tightly.
"What's that?"
"Leave it," Tom said sharply, but she had already plucked it from his grasp. He moved towards her, marble hands outstretched. Ginny inched forward, desperate, curious. So many memories. The ending was different but they all began the same way. Dear Tom…
Druella opened the book, then looked back up at him in bewilderment. "It's empty."
Tom smiled faintly. "To you, yes. But then, you never could see beneath the surface of things."
"But why do you have a -"
He shook his head, staring at her. His pale skin seemed almost to shimmer in the shadowy twilight. "You were never a part of this." He took the book from her, tucking it away within his robes. His prefect badge flashed at the movement, like a poisonous star, like the eye of a snake; it hurt Ginny's eyes.
"Don't be long," Druella said wistfully as she trailed out of the tower room, a haunted, lonely ghost of a girl.
Tom remained standing at the wide aperture, his figure black against the night. Scudding clouds cast moving shadows across his white skin. Ginny leaned back against the wall, her heart beating hard. Try as she might, she could not shake off the images of Druella so close to falling, so broken. She knew that desperate tumble into darkness (I would fall off the edge of the world for you, Tom). She remembered too his idle caresses of a languorous lover and how he had held the girl inches (hundreds upon thousands of feet) from death. Just one push was all it would have taken. For one moment, she had been almost sure he would -
And for a horrible split second, she had wanted him to.
What the hand dare seize the fire? (William Blake, The Tyger)
Tom began to dream of fire.
Not the fire of the Blitz that used to wake him so violently in the early days of the London bombing, but a different, softer heat. These dreams didn't cause him to bolt awake in a hard bed, cold and sweating and shaking. Instead, he tossed and turned in silken emerald sheets, wanting to bask in the inviting warmth soclose, to feel it melting his marble-cold skin. Fire to warm the heart and sever the soul. He saw his blue-veined wrists and yearned to see crimson tributaries flowing beneath the skin. He saw a pristine, delicate figure and rippling pre-Raphaelite hair. Hair red as fire. Red as blood. Soon, he vowed, she would be stained with the blood of Mudbloods. Freckles the colour of cinnamon and skin that smelt of sunlight. A tiger lily, ripe for the picking.
Other times, he saw her flying. A red comet, blazing, bleeding across the sky. He watched as the wind rushed through her hair, sending it streaming behind her like a banner, her face upturned to the bracing air. She did not want to drown, so she flew instead. Tom could not say how he knew this, only he did. Just as he knew that the higher she flew, the further away she went from underground chambers, darkness and pools of water even though that was where she belonged. Her soul had once floated on a haze of green effervescent light, trapped within the confines of a stone prison. And now -
Endless, cloudless blue. And she soared above the clouds, beyond the reach of anything, anyone. Nothing could catch her. Perhaps not even him. But still he tried, singeing his fingers, seeking, grasping -
"Tom. Tom."
Slowly, he opened his eyes, the cold night air biting into his skin at once. He was in his dormitory, dimly lit with cool green lights. Druella was leaning over him, long hair spilling over her shoulders, pale as moonlight and fine as cobwebs. Her luminous skin seemed touched with a faint phosphorescence, her breathing so light she really could have been a ghost.
"You were talking in your sleep," she said, shattering the illusion in the frenetic rise and fall of her chest.
"Was I?" Tom muttered drowsily.
She nodded.
He stretched languidly, easing out his long body. "Anything of interest?"
"I don't - I don't know -"
He reached up and caught a strand of hair, bringing her face closer to his. "You're so pale," he murmured. Others might have been moved by Druella's spectral beauty, Tom was not one of them.
"I'm fine."
"I wasn't asking if you were sick."
Tom sat up, the sheets pooling around his narrow hips in a rustle of silk. His flesh was searing cold; the thought of Druella touching him, kissing him with frozen lips was suddenly repulsive. He groped for his wand on the bedside table and eased himself out of bed. His pale figure moved towards the fireplace.
"Incendio," he said.
The fire leapt into life, a rippling sheet of red and gold, the crackling tips licking the marble edges of the fireplace. He stood still for several moments, feeling the wave of heat washing over his bare skin. But it wasn't enough. Never enough.
Druella was sitting up in bed, staring at him. "But you never have the fire lit."
"I know," said Tom.
Lovelorn
Dating was a very easy business, once you got down to it. A few choice words here, an appropriate laugh there, and it seemed any boy was to be had for the taking. If Ginny had known this before, she was certain she would not have been so blushing and tongue-tied around Harry in those early years.
When had things started to change? One moment she was merely the youngest Weasley girl that tagged along after her brothers, the next she was a vibrant, popular Chaser with a fierce, desperate, hunted look in her eyes. Eyes that were far too old for a girl of sixteen.
Boys liked her. She would have been blind not to see that. But they saw only a part of her. They saw her as she was in daylight hours. Bright, funny, confident. They didn't know that inside she was as brittle as glass and dreaded the darkness even as she secretly longed for it.
She wondered where her shyness had gone. She wondered when she had become so aggressive towards the men in her life.
She was cruel, too. She had not been cruel before. It often came without thinking - poisonous words acidic on the tip of her tongue, vicious thoughts darting through her mind with the speed of a striking snake, a bitter laugh-that-wasn't-quite-a-laugh. Weasley temper, her friends said, merely dismissing it as one of her quirks.
Sometimes, she argued with Dean on purpose. He was so cheerful, so easy-going, so hopelessly… nice. There was no cruelty in Dean, no wickedness. He would have been improved by a little wickedness. Secretly, she acknowledged to herself that this was why she tried to rile him. If she had managed to uncover some hidden depths, she might have tried harder to keep him when things began to fall apart. She could have stopped him slipping away but she lacked the energy.
Her friends thought she was mad. Dean was cheerful, funny, good-looking, nice. It was idiocy to let him go.
But good-looking and nice were no longer enough. Or perhaps all too much. After all, that was how it began.
Kindness. Affection. Manipulation. Possession. Invasion. Destruction.
Such was the lesson of love, and Ginny had learnt the hard way. And yet she sometimes thought she was doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over. Similarities that kept reappearing that she fiercely tried to push to the back of her mind -
Dean was dark-haired. Michael had been dark-haired. And Harry -
She loved Harry. But then, it was impossible to not love Harry. Sometimes, she suspected he was looking at her differently these days. But after five years of frustrated desires, she hardly dared to let herself hope. And in the dark, voices whispered to her that she wasn't good enough, wasn't clever enough… not like that Mudblood he spends so much time with… he never looks at you like that, does he? Why would he? No one will ever love you, Ginny, not like I do and always, always will, remember that, I'll never let you go…
Oh yes, Tom had taught her all about love. The kind of passion that made the breath hitch and the heart pound, and the mind spin and spin and spin until there was nothing but the darkness, shades of endless black; black as night, black as ink, black as the juices of an overripe plum, black as congealed blood that ran down stone walls in cryptic messages… your writing, Ginny, yours, because I told you to do it, and you'd do anything for me, wouldn't you, Ginny?
Oh yes, Tom. Anything at all.
And still the black void remained empty, and waited.
…
Tom tired of Druella quickly, far more quickly than he had expected. Only now was he beginning to realise how great his destiny was. These alliances and petty power games among the Slytherins struck him as contemptuously banal these days. He dominated them all, and it had been accomplished with ridiculous ease. In his heart and soul, he hungered for a greater conflict, one worthy of his greatness and power.
Grindlewald? Dumbledore?
But it was not those great and powerful wizards that he returned to time and time again. It was her.
She was becoming an obsession. Tom was not acquainted with love or kindness or tenderness, but he understood craving. He had desired things before, but never quite like this. Never this need, this ceaseless longing. Without her, he was porcelain and marble, frozen and unmoving. He would stand as cold and lifeless as the statue of Salazar Slytherin that lay below the castle. That was the true skeleton that lay in the Chamber forever. He would not succumb to the same fate.
Druella's pallor revolted him. Tom knew this now, with a resigned kind of acceptance. He had never cared for her, but he had tolerated her presence for what she could bring him. But now it seemed she was outliving her usefulness. Sometimes at night when she lay beneath him, it was not her he saw at all, but a tangle of pale limbs and freckled arms and hair the shade of blood and copper. It was only then that passion raged within him and he sought to subdue and dominate this phoenix, this creature of fire. And he wanted - oh, how he wanted. Take her, break her, his very own burnt offering. This one anomaly in his efficient, rigidly controlled world.
When would she come, this wild-eyed sacrifice?
He would stare into the mirror late into the night, until the firelit red coals burned to black, waiting for the gathering shadows to blaze with sudden illumination. All the while, she danced through his dreams, too fast, too fleeting for him to grasp, but he would have her yet.
But when? One year, ten years, fifty?
You will not elude me forever, he whispered into the emptiness, and no one answered.
Immortality would be his. And he would find her, this phoenix, this defiant spirit. Not in dreams and longings and maddened half visions, but alive in front of him, flesh and blood and skin and bone. Nothing else would suffice. He would penetrate the mysteries hidden in the caverns of her soul, hollow her out until she was a shell that answered only to him. He must find her.
Or lure her to him. After all, more flies were caught with honey than vinegar. But how? What did he have that could possibly entice her to him?
The question gnawed at him during the liminal hours as the moon climbed higher in the ever-darkening sky and Druella slept beside him as one dead, encased in ice and glass, with no lover's kiss to awaken her. In the darkness, the diary sat untouched, unopened. But Tom was patient. He could afford to wait, especially since it would be courting peril to open the Chamber again so soon…
Then it came to him with startling simplicity. There it was, sitting in front of him this whole time. The one thing that bound them together. Why had he never thought of it before?
The diary. It had all began with the diary, his blood staining the pages as he began the seemingly impossible task of finding a vessel. He would not wait and put his faith in uncertainties. He would have her and no other. Bind her to him, to paper and ink, and ensure that Salazar Slytherin's great labour was carried out.
The diary had always been different. Seemingly the most unremarkable of those Horcruxes he intended to create, but it had a purpose other than that of a receptacle for his soul. For what use was a soul, without a body to enact its desires? She would die in carrying out his ancient birthright.
And perhaps then this fever would be burned out of him, and he would be untouchable once more.
Flesh and Blood
The day Ginny forgot everything was the day she decided to take the book.
She knew, even before the eddying currents of receding time had realigned themselves, that something was going to be different. When the world was (old?) newly formed around her and her mind stopped spinning, she opened her eyes to the past. And she saw what it was that had changed.
Tom was nowhere to be seen. Normally, he was the magnetic force that drew her to places, the black hole and centre around which everything orbited. And now he was gone. She stood alone in the dormitory, the line of pristinely made beds stretching either side of her. Silver and green, those colours that haunted her nightmares. That whispered to her that the cold was good, that it could love her, if she would only allow it. That caused her eyes to open and see the Gryffindor walls were only that shade of red because they were slick with blood.
She stood, and waited. Only this time no blood dripped from her hands (yet) and she was no longer a child. She had stopped being a child the moment she opened a book of knowledge and darkness entered her soul. Bleeding away her sugar-coated childhood dreams and inscribing a much darker story that even now still ran through her veins, shaping her every decision since.
Where are you, Tom?
Ginny looked around, and she saw -
There. Innocuous as ever.
Her mouth went dry. It wasn't - it is -
Lying so innocently on a bedside table. It briefly occurred to her that it was not like Tom, to be so careless with his possessions, but she brushed that thought aside. She was too overwhelmed by seeing it again, after so many years. The last time Ginny had been so close to the diary, it had been tattered and ruined, ink seeping sullenly from its sodden pages, a Basilisk fang protruding from its heart and centre. But now… seeing it whole again, alive, it seemed to call to her.
She had never been able to physically touch anything before. But somehow - somehow - she knew that this book would be different. This was the book that had shattered and altered and changed her forever. How could it not be different? She took one step closer. Another. Another.
Something warned her not to touch it. But she couldn't stop herself now. Not in 1943. Not in 1993. Some fate drew her inexplicably on to taste the darkness, the danger, the death that lay within those leather-bound covers. It perversely fascinated her. Her heart was pounding in her throat; her palms slick with sweat. She wasn't going to do this… it was mad, she was mad…
And Ginny reached out and laid her hands on the book.
Nothing happened.
She almost laughed at the anticlimactic outcome. Oh, she could touch it, certainly. Feel the worn leather cover beneath her fingers, trace the faded spine and gilded handwriting (T.M. Riddle, Vauxhall Road, London) but nothing jumped out at her, no Dark Magic passing through her veins. It was, after all, just a book.
That's what you thought last time.
The inner voice sobered her like a pitcher of ice-cold water. She stood motionless, frozen with memories.
Dear Tom, I can't tell you how wonderful it is that I've found someone to talk to at last… Dear Tom, something strange happened last night but I must have passed out because I don't remember where I was… Dear Tom, I think I'm losing my mind… Dear Tom, why won't you let me go… Dear Tom, please stop, I don't want to -
Something fell on her shaking hands. Ginny looked down and realised she was crying. She hadn't cried since Harry had found her in the Chamber of Secrets nearly four years ago. Crying won't save you, Ginny, now be a good girl and lie down, and I promise it will be quick, just like going to sleep…
Her hands tightened on the diary until her nails dug into the hard leather-bound covering. She would take it, take it and burn it, destroy it for ever and ever until he was gone from her for good -
"I would put that back, if you know what's good for you."
The diary fell out of her rigid hands, hitting the table with a loud thump. Ginny was certain that her heart had stopped. And surely her breath, otherwise she would be screaming -
"Turn around."
She didn't move. Her consciousness was reeling, eddying, blindly she tried to steady herself, to fight (run). This can't be happening, this can't be real, not again…
That quietly commanding voice spoke again. "Try to run, or even think about reaching for your wand, and you'll be dead in a moment. Believe me, you wouldn't be the first."
Slowly, she turned around. Her chest was tight with terror, longing -
There.
Black hair, parchment-pale skin, liquid eyes. Exactly as she remembered him from the dark corners of her nightmares. But the worst thing was that she wasn't really certain they were nightmares at all. And this time he was seeing her, truly seeing her. And his expression caught and held her still. Ginny had expected to see curiosity, outrage, sadistic glee.
She hadn't expected to see recognition.
"You," he breathed, his mouth forming the ghost of a smile. It was not a pleasant one.
Her heart thudded out a panicked rhythm. How does he know me? How can he know me?
"Come closer."
Unthinking, she obediently took one stumbling step forward, then another - so near - then horror roiled through her stomach and up her throat. No -
She stopped dead. Tom was still watching her, oddly wary. She wrapped her arms around herself, her body shaking uncontrollably -
He moved easily towards her, pausing to look down at her through narrowed eyes. "You've been following me for weeks now. No… longer than that, even. Did you really think I wouldn't notice?"
"No, I -"
"That was you I saw in the corridor, wasn't it? And my dreams… did you do that as well?"
Dreams, what dreams, I don't -
"I didn't -"
"Don't attempt to lie to me. I will know."
She looked towards the door and inhaled an unsteady breath through tight lungs.
"I've put a Silencing charm on the room." His voice was calm. "No one will hear you."
She had fought Death Eaters, Ginny reminded herself. She could face a student. He's still a boy, she told herself over and over. He's not Voldemort yet. But Voldemort was never the one she had been afraid of. Slowly, slowly, her hand inched backwards, seeking her wand… where is it?
Tom was studying her, quietly curious, as though she were some unusual magical artefact for his perusal. "You're different," he said at last. "You're not a student here, are you? I would know. I'd have remembered a face and hair like yours, I'm sure."
Ginny wasn't sure what he meant by that and didn't dare to ask. There. She had no sooner touched the polished wood of her wand when Tom gripped her wrist, halting her questing fingers. His touch was like cold metal. So cold it burned like frostbite. The wand clattered uselessly to the floor. She tried to squirm away because she hated (loved) hated him, but he held her fast, unimaginable strength in his narrow, high-shouldered frame. Her skin was frozen beneath his touch, but inside she was blazing, burning like a fallen star. And she was sick, sick with longing…
"Then again, you're the right age, and your robes… and you're certainly no ghost."
Cold fingertips traced the line of her jaw. The yellow and black ring glittered on his hand. "Did Dumbledore send you?" he inquired.
What was she going to do? Everything she had learned in the DA last year was a mindless blank. She tried to calm herself, to think, but how could she think with him here, in front of her, holding her, just as she had always dreaded (wanted) -
"Answer me," he said harshly, shaking her once, hard. Then his expression softened again. "Remember that I know more than you think. I know you're a Gryffindor, that you've been watching me for some time now. But there are things you should know, like the fact I am not someone to be crossed. What do you think of that, little dreamer?"
He leaned in towards her. Up close, she could see his face lacked the flawed familiarity of Harry's, his white skin unmarked by any freckles. In his eyes, black as shadows, she saw no mercy.
"Tom -"
"You know my name?" He smiled absently. "Not that it matters. Names imposed on us by others mean very little, wouldn't you agree? Our true names, however…"
She summoned all her courage, squaring her small shoulders. "What's yours, then? Voldemo-"
That startled him. He drew a sharp intake of breath. "Who are you?"
I have an advantage. I know him, his future, but he doesn't know anything about me, not even my name -
For the first time, she realised she had power over him. The realisation hit her like the heady rush of Felix Felicis. It was intoxicating.
And Ginny started to laugh.
Nothing could have angered him more. She felt his iron grip tighten. Outwardly, he was calm and quiet, as always, but she sensed the electric tension beneath the cool exterior, the subtle cruelty he was so capable of. He looked hard into her face, eyes blazing.
"The truth. Your name."
He was looking at her intently, dark eyes digging into her very soul with long, prying fingers, seeking to uncover her innermost secrets, but he knows them already…. Then she realised, too late, what he was doing. And of course, the more she tried not to think of it, the more the words inevitably rose to the surface of her mind. Not thinking, not thinking, not thinking -
But she saw it was hopeless. With a sinking feeling, she watched as a slow smile spread across his face.
"Ginny," he said.
…
"Ginny," he said.
Short for Ginevra, not Virginia, to his surprise. Virginia would have been more appropriate. His sweet little virgin sacrifice. He probed deeper.
Ginny…
Weasley.
For a moment, disgust filled him. A Weasley? It was so very… common. A Weasley to carry out the will of his second self? It was unthinkable. He looked her over in contempt. Yes, she was a Weasley, alright. Vulgar, brash, freckled, and Gryffindor to the core. He should have guessed it at once.
But then Tom looked closer. She was shaking down to the bone, whether it be from terror or defiance, and the wild force of her gaze could have burned him alive. That was interesting. Oh, she hated him. And how much sweeter it was than Druella's passive devotion or the admiration of his professors or the submissive obedience of his housemates. Yet she was as fragile as a doll for all that; her pretty face haunted and vulnerable with the shadow of grief. Faint traces of tear tracks glittered on her cheeks.
Her tears and my blood.
A sense of wild, cold joy suddenly filled him. His expression was radiant. It had happened, then.
She has already been marked, already been chosen. I will make it binding. There can be no other.
Yes, he had chosen her. Formed her, shaped her, made her a part of his destiny. Besides, he needed her only until the self bound within the diary's pages could take form. And was it not a curiously fitting irony? A Gryffindor carrying out the work of Salazar Slytherin? For who would suspect such a girl to be the guardian of his will? Who would look for Slytherin's heir in the heart of Gryffindor?
It's more perfect than I ever imagined. My word made flesh.
How fitting. To revenge Godric Gryffindor's cowardice and Mudblood sympathies by sacrificing one of his own to Slytherin's monster. How much of himself had he already poured into her? The part of Tom that endlessly thirsted for knowledge wanted to know more, to demand that she tell him whether his destiny was being enacted, that the name of Lord Voldemort was known and feared throughout the Wizarding World.
He tugged at her arm sharply, pulling her towards his bedside table where the diary lay, still unopened.
"You know what this is, don't you?"
She glared at him, saying nothing. Tom realised he had become used to unthinking obedience. Outright defiance came as something of a surprise. It made no difference. Willing or not, she was his. He had chosen her, and there could be no severance.
"Of course you know. I was right - how could it be otherwise?"
"Tom -"
Tom. How he hated that name. But from her lips… it was something profound and awed and fearful and terrible. What twisted array if emotions did this girl feel for him to say his name with such adoration and loathing? As for his other name -
She couldn't know. She couldn't. No one knew. He had been so careful. She knew too much, of that he was certain.
Two words. Six syllables. Then he would be free of her forever. It would be so easy.
A thrill of exhilaration ran through him at the thought of killing her. It was intoxicating.
No. Not yet.
He had other plans for this one. He would form her in his own image, filling that brightness with shadows, hollowing her out, a vessel to suit his purposes, to harness his soul. She had no comprehension of the great honour he was bestowing upon her. Not that it wouldn't kill her in the end, of course. But her death would be for a higher purpose -
Her arm twisted beneath his hold the same instant her demurely stockinged leg flew out from beneath her robes, catching him painfully in the shin. Tom's hand flew to his wand, ignoring the throb of pain in his lower leg that her foot had inflicted.
"Stupefy," he said softly, almost tenderly. She collapsed at once, and Tom's arms opened to receive her.
She smelt of spices and orange blossom. For a moment, it made him light-headed. He could feel the blood pulsing beneath the surface in an urgent rhythm. Her skin was warm, alive, not white like his own, but pale gold and peach, her cheeks dusted with freckles the colour of cinnamon. So delicate, that skin, it would take just the slightest indentation of his nails to break the flesh and leave the faintest path of red. Gryffindor colours, Gryffindor blood.
She was so light, weighing barely more than a child. He stared down at the limp body in his arms. The tangle of pale limbs, the freckled arms, hair the shade of blood and copper. He suspected her to be about his age, though she was small, far smaller than Druella, who would stand a head taller than this girl. Too thin as well, Tom thought, casting a scrutinising eye over her prone figure. How still she was. So vulnerable.
The sudden surge of desire that flared in his bloodstream caught him off-guard. At seventeen, Tom was no stranger to his physical impulses, yet it had always been something far removed from himself, a vague and unimportant thing, easily forgotten. Nothing like this elemental warring beneath his skin, the fierce and savage longing to revive the girl and make the hatred in her eyes turn to lust, to turn her fury and antipathy to willingness and wanting. It would be his greatest victory.
Tom paused, startled. Where had that thought come from? It disturbed him. He realised he wanted this girl, this burnished little gypsy. Oh so very much.
Her poppy-red hair spilled around her small face. He twisted his fingers through the vibrant strands, bringing her face closer to his. Poppies. A symbol of death, of eternal sleep. Tom wondered idly if she realised that in Greco-Roman mythology it also symbolised the promise of resurrection after death. Either way, it did not matter. Her life and soul were his now. If he wished her to die, then she would die. If he wished for her to rise again, she would be reborn. A phoenix out of the ashes.
But what would happen when the phoenix clashed with the serpent, these two ancients caught in a battle of scales and feathers and fangs and talons?
She was dangerous. Not to others, but to him specifically. She was unaware of her true power. He should kill her. He thought briefly of her freckled skin, splashed with blood. Tempting as that was… No. He needed her alive, for the time being. Iron-willed self-control was something Tom had grown up with from his earliest years. He was more than capable of controlling his wilder impulses.
Instead, he stroked her flaming hair, speaking softly to her unresponsive form. "You understand, don't you, the honour of what I'm entrusting you with?"
Long fingers traced the shape of her face, the lightly freckled skin, the damp lashes, the swell of her lips, slightly parted.
"This is where it begins. The making of a new world. You will die, and I… I will live forever."
His half-tender caress paused at the glistening moisture lingering on her cheeks.
Her tears and my blood, he thought, again.
One arm bracing her, he shifted her body slightly so he was better able to handle his wand. Steeling himself, he traced it with deliberate slowness across his upturned palm. Again he felt that burning ice-ache beneath the skin. The bead of blood darkened his wrist. Her tears glinted, pearlescent, before the blood fell, clouding the tears with dark colour, like wine through water. It trickled steadily downward, leaving a trail across the diary's open pages.
"With my blood, I bind thee."
And the liquid disappeared into the paper. Holding her face in his hands, Tom leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. A benediction.
"So mote it be."
It was done. She would be the living will of his other self, the self bound in the diary. He would know her the moment her hand touched those pages. Willing or not, she was his. He did not need her loyalty. Did not want it. It would be so much sweeter to drain her slowly, to watch her struggle, and fight, and finally succumb. They always succumbed at the end. How he would relish the sight of the warm skin turning cold and pallid, the bright eyes dimming in death, her soul sinking into an endless void, the pure, Gryffindor blood freezing in her veins...
Frozen? No, no, he didn't want that at all. He didn't want her quiet and cold, like a statue, like Druella. However gratifying it might be to see her pliant and at his mercy, a deeper, fiercer part of him wanted her awake, alive, wild, as unruly and blazing as the flashes of her hair he glimpsed, always just out of his reach.
He must speak with her. A faint smile touched his lips.
"Ennervate."
Her eyes fluttered open. The moment she saw him, she tried to jerk away. Tom tightened his arms around her easily, somewhat surprised at his body's very primitive response to the feel of her struggling against him. She was breathing hard, her thin chest pressed against his. "What did you - let go -"
"Do stop struggling," he said impatiently. "I haven't hurt you yet, have I?"
Bright, sharp agony flashed through her eyes. "Yes."
"Liar," he snarled, suddenly incensed beyond reasoning. "I've barely touched you."
She shook her head, tendrils of hair flying to and fro like dancing flames at the movement. "You have hurt me, But not in a way you would understand."
Tom shrugged. He was in no mood for speaking in riddles. He held up the diary, noting with interest the shudder that passed through her when she looked at it.
"Now tell me what this is."
"The past." She spoke dully.
"No. It is the future." Tom paused. "Our future. How would you like that? Would you like to be a part of something magnificent?"
"Go to hell," she spat.
Tom thought suddenly back to the orphanage, of London's skies burning and the streets filled with the dead and dying. His face hardened. "I've already been."
She sneered. "Not for long enough."
He looked over her curiously. "Whatever did I do to make you hate me so much?"
She pressed her lips tightly together, shaking her head. He could have used legilimency and found out at once, but it was far more enticing to persuade her to tell him… to open up to him… in every sense.
"Tell me."
Ginny glared at him, her expression filled with loathing. Tom realised he was enjoying himself immensely. Her hatred was an addictive stimulant, something new and intoxicating. She was vibrant, magnetic. Heat to his coolness.
"You won't say? You won't tell me anything… Ginny?" He tested the word on his tongue, finding that he liked the sound of it very much. Ginny, his little blood sacrifice, his martyr, his unsung requiem. His fire in the depths of the earth. Warming his soul in its long, lonely wait for awakening.
The sound of her name from his lips seemed to do something to her. Her head jerked up, both horror and indescribable yearning flickering across her small, vivid face. Tom leaned forward. Oh, how easy they all were to read, these Gryffindors, that all wore their hearts on their sleeves. Yes, he had her now.
"You pretended to love me," she said at last. A pause. "And I believed you."
He smiled. "Did I? And how did I go about it, I wonder? Did I perhaps…?"
Without knowing where the impulse came from, Tom leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, inwardly relishing the small, involuntary gasp, the stiffening of her slim body against his. Searing potions and snake venom could not have consumed him more utterly. She tasted of firewhiskey, scorching his lips, the blood in his veins transcending to liquid elixir, sharp and sweet and burning. Perhaps this, then, was the rebirth he had always envisaged. He dimly registered her weak struggles, but merely grappled her closer to him, body to body, pressing his hips against hers and felt her body relax and become pliant in his arms -
No. This can go no further. She is a tool, the guardian of my second self. A pawn. Nothing more. I will not allow her to be anything more.
Slowly, he forced himself to draw back. A taste of forbidden fruit was all he would allow himself. Any more and his future would fade before it was even formed. And yet… what was a mere taste when he wanted to consume her whole?
Tom barely registered the stinging sensation against the side of his face. She was trembling, the hand that had struck him now balled in fury. Her eyes burned and her hair flickered around her face in fiery tendrils. "What the hell was -"
"Obliviate." The spell left him calmly, with intent. He watched as a veil seemed to fall over her eyes, the irises becoming dim and unfocused. For now. Only for now. Tom had performed enough memory charms to know there would be no lasting damage. Enough only to ensure she would have no memory of this little encounter. Not after that display of weakness he had so foolishly indulged in.
But she had given him the idea. The perfect, ironic, wonderful idea. To make her love him. Oh yes, he would remember that, when the time came. Little Miss Weasley would be sorry she ever revealed that to him.
But she would not know any of this yet. However, in time…
Her eyes flickered, still vague, still unfocused. The traces of tears still lingered on her lashes. And Tom kissed the curve of her neck (so soft), inhaling the scent of innocence and it was sweet.
He could keep her. Possess her, take her, make her his. Tangle his hands in that wild red hair, make her scream in pain, scream in pleasure. Would she shudder as he slid his hands up her pale thighs, allow him to take her body as he would inevitably take her soul? Ripping every last veil of innocence from her, their entwined hands awash with blood and ink as he watched the phoenix being reborn from the fire of his relentless desire, robbing her of every last breath, no name on her lips but his as she died and lived again. Enchain her in an eternal caress. Together, they could shape the world as they wished, and it was so very, very tempting. Never before had Tom released anything he had put his mind to possessing, but he had chosen her for another purpose. For his future -
Tom stared. She was… blurring. The edges of her were becoming indistinct, like pale gossamer or fragile lace. The sight of it was oddly familiar, relishing that moment of awakened life, of existence... green light and water, water, water, can you feel it, Ginny? Life - my life - coming back to me… That fire-kissed hair fading, rippling, and her body dissolving to fleeting mist, to water-veined pallor. Like trying to grasp the wind and hold it in his hands as the arms of another time opened to prise her from his hold.
No, a part of him thought. No, I am not ready to renounce her just yet. But he knew it would be safer if he did. And so Tom cradled her in his arms as she began to fade. And to stir, fleetingly.
"Tom -" she began to say, then was gone. The dormitory echoed with her silence, and with all that she had no chance to say.
Tom sank down until he was seated cross-legged on the floor, a black-bound book in his hands where a girl had been so recently, her presence still lingering like one of the ghosts who wandered the corridors of this castle. Gone, but not forgotten.
And, one day, he would find her again.
Tom closed his eyes, a curving whisper escaping his lips as his pale hands traced the paper with words yet unwritten.
You will awaken me from half a century of (stony) sleep.
And I will awaken you from a child's dreams of peaceful happiness and sweet morning promises. I will offer you black-stemmed roses and ink-stained kisses in exchange for your heartfelt words and willing body. I will drown your innocence in blood and tears, and arise from water to bestow my gratitude for your place in my resurrection.
And I will kill you, Ginny Weasley.
