Okay, I am the worst I know. I haven't updated in ever and I have few excuses. Thanks so much to everyone who still read and stuck to this story despite my absolute insolence. After many a writer's block I am back. I want to thank all of you again for the lovely reviews, I did not expect so much encouragement!
Kitty Black Cat (thank you for the lovely review, I hope I can answer some of your questions in this chapter, but some will come later, I'm really happy you like it!); SourSugarQuills (thanks for the review, I like how everyone's amused by Riddle's reactions so far:) as for him loving her, no, we're far from that now, but well, you'll have to read to find out); Ms Wintersleep (updated now! so thank you for supporting my story:) ); springawakening1894 (thank you once more for reviewing, glad you like young Tom:)); jinglyjess (hi, sorry for making you wait so long, hope you enjoy and thank you!); Outlaw-Lanaya (well, it will take some time but it will happen:)).
Please enjoy:)
Holy water cannot help you now
See I've come to burn your kingdom down
And no rivers and no lakes, can put the fire out
I'm gonna raise the stakes; I'm gonna smoke you out
Seven devils all around you
Seven devils in my house
See they were there when I woke up this morning
I'll be dead before the day is done
Florence + The Machine - Seven Devils
Chapter 3: Memories
Keeping track of time was very important, she had read once in a wizard novel about the First War. It was a direct account of one of Grindelwald's prisoners. He had described how he had survived almost an entire year locked up in an underground cave.
At the time, she had not thought it would matter so much now. She never really thought she would be in such a situation to begin with.
She had entertained the possibility of war, of course. She had taken into account the fact that her proximity to Harry Potter and the Golden Trio might result in some form of harm, but it had never truly materialized itself.
Even her unfortunate meeting with Tom Riddle in her First Year hadn't prepared her for this; she had not at first registered it as a direct consequence of Harry Potter's influence because it had happened before she had befriended him.
No matter what plans Lucius Malfoy had had at the time, no matter how much everything revolved around The Boy Who Lived, she had wanted to believe she had only been saved and not condemned by Harry Potter. Even if later years had revealed the opposite, even if she had had to bury the shame of being a transitory victim in the much bigger scheme of killing Harry Potter, she had maintained the conviction that nothing truly physical could take place; that it was only her mind that was scarred.
Which is why now that it had actually happened – the evil of her childhood and the danger of association had both taken form in this cell – she could not quite grasp it.
She was lying on the cold, wet floor, surrounded by darkness and filth, her every limb aching painfully, begging to be numbed, and she was watching drops of black water fall on her burning forehead, but she was still wondering whether it wasn't all a nightmare, a game, or a trick of the mind.
Logically, she knew why she had been kidnapped, why it made sense for her to be taken first and why she should have expected this sort of danger from the start, but she still couldn't wrap her mind around it.
Deep down you know it, you've read about it, you've seen the pictures in a newspaper, you've listened to hushed discussions between your parents, but you never think it would really happen to you.
It's the same with death; the difference is that death is permanent, whereas she had no idea how much longer she would lie there, helpless and alone.
That is why keeping track of time was so important. She was helpless and alone and she didn't know anything. So she had to pay attention to what she did know; she had to count the hours and make sense of the progression of days and nights.
Even if she got it wrong, even if she thought it was night when it was day, even if she was just fooling herself, she had to do it. That's what the author of that novel had said himself. He sometimes felt like he was counting down the time until he died, but it helped, either way. It kept him thinking, kept him alert, rational, human.
And what else could she do, really?
If she got up again and tried approaching the bars to call out for someone or talk to those dreadfully quiet inmates she had spotted across the dark hallway, she would probably get another punishment, maybe worse than Crucio.
And she would do just about everything only to avoid being subjected to that curse again.
In addition to keeping the time, what kept her awake and thinking was the question, the question that every prisoner has to answer what one point: When will I crack?
She had estimated that only five days had passed, but she was already having a hard time breathing in there. And what did "cracking" really entail? What did it mean? That she would start crying, begging for her life and mercy? Promising to give or tell them anything they wanted?
She had already cried for hours, knees drawn to her chest, yelling obscenities and cursing everyone around her - the howling that the Death Eaters had described to their Master - but she had not begged them for anything, not because she was too proud, but because she knew it would be in vain.
Those people, the men patrolling the corridors, they weren't in charge and she knew it all too well.
The only one who could show her mercy was Tom Riddle himself and so far, he planned on keeping her locked up until Harry Potter came to save her.
It was ironic. She would have laughed; Harry had broken up with her to prevent just this.
She wished he had been wrong. She wished she didn't have to be the prize; the damsel in distress; the proverbial love interest that drives the hero to slay the dragon.
She felt like a joint of meat, exchanged between two men; one younger, a boy, the other not even a real man.
And there was nothing she could do about it. She was someone's weakness, not someone's strength.
Sometime at noon (or what she considered to be noon by her estimations), she was given her usual ratio of food.
Well, it wasn't really food. It looked like hotchpotch made to resemble a sort of gruel. It had tiny bits of old bread and pudding crusts in it.
She had to crawl towards the bars to drag the small plate towards her.
She had learnt in the first two days that if she wasn't fast enough, an inmate from the adjoining cell would make sure to take it for her. It wasn't really stealing; nothing belonged to anybody and people were desperate enough; they did not care about the others, much less whether they got their miserable gruel or not.
Ginny had had to starve because she had not known, had not grown as desperate yet.
But the lack of food and water was the least of her problems.
Her clothes had become unbearable. They stuck to her skin like a thick layer of dirt and it made her nauseous. She smelt horrible but everything else around her smelt the same, so she hardly felt self-conscious. The problem was that she couldn't get used to the smell; every day it grew even staler and even more pungent because all inmates had to relieve themselves in a hole at the back of their cells. She had had to do the same on her third day, an act which had turned her stomach inside out and had made her dig her nails deep into her skin out of shame and humiliation.
There is no worse torture than witnessing your own carnal existence fragmented into physiological needs that become the burdening centre of what once was your entire life. She was reduced to an animal without a conscience.
She had to lie in her own filth and try to think, with all the misery digging holes into her skin, trying to reach her mind and shut it down.
But all throughout those hellish days, she had not once felt sad.
No. She only felt angry. Deeply, deeply angry. When she had cried, most of her tears had been tears of anger.
Her anger had become quiet, it is true, but it was still there. She was only tired, but she would start again, when she gathered enough strength.
If she had felt anything else as profoundly as she felt this anger, Voldemort might have sensed it, just as he had sensed the pain, but as he was always angry himself, he didn't mind it.
His Horcrux was an angry fragment of an angry soul.
Tom slept in his bed that night, dreaming of Ginny Weasley.
It had never happened before; dreaming of her.
The other pieces of his soul had absorbed the memory of his young self when his Horcrux-diary had been destroyed and once he had been reborn, his own soul had regained knowledge of this young girl he had tormented so, but anything more than a recollection had not crossed his mind for quite some time.
There were moments when he remembered something he normally should not have remembered; the words and actions of the adolescent Tom Riddle towards the Weasley child.
That younger Tom was still him, but he was vastly different. They weren't the same; he was real and that Tom was only a memory locked in a Horcrux. When the diary was destroyed, that piece of his soul was destroyed with it, but this memory persisted; not only the memory of his youth which was hard to escape but the memory of Ginny Weasley.
He had no way of knowing why; he had no way of knowing the truth.
His head rested against soft pillows and his face looked as calm and serene as any simple man's.
The dream started off at Hogwarts at another one of Professor Slughorn's Slug Club meetings. Tom had already asked about the Horcruxes by this point and Slughorn was considerably less warm to him, seeing as he regretted having imparted such knowledge to a student.
Still, he did not feel uncomfortable sitting there, feasting and talking nonsense like everybody else, smiling teasingly at one of the many Black cousins, the one that was the most desperate about getting a husband as quick as possible.
He felt so very normal and common, chatting and drinking and chatting some more; it almost felt pleasant, dreadfully so.
The problem was that he couldn't thoroughly enjoy himself.
There was this nagging doubt at the back of his head. He was staring at his Potions master, wondering from time to time whether he was not hiding something from him.
He kept thinking the man had not told him everything. He wanted to know more and more. A brief and shaky account of what he considered to be the peak of mastery in the Dark Arts couldn't satisfy him.
He wished Slughorn were different. He wished he were strong and ambitious; a true Slytherin able to help him.
Instead, he was stuck with a buffoon.
Then, halfway through the sumptuous meal, someone knocked at the door and a young girl entered the room.
She seemed like darkness stepping out from another darkness. Her hair was wild and red, like a barely concealed flame. She had warm brown eyes that smiled even when her lips did not.
She seemed nervous, but not entirely scared of being there.
She was also dressed in a shabby, but pretty-looking black dress.
Ginny.
"Ah, Miss Weasley! I am so glad you decided to come. Please, do make yourself at home! You are among friends here," Slughorn greeted her, getting up.
Ginny advanced towards the table, staring warily at the people around it.
She didn't seem to know anybody. Then her eyes landed on Tom.
"Where shall we seat you? Hmm? Oh, Mr. Rosier, would you be so kind as to let Ginevra sit next to you?"
Tom frowned at the name. Ginevra. How...how vulgar.
But Miss Weasley seemed to have other plans. Without a word, she walked up to Riddle and searching his face for the answer to a question, she bent down until her mouth was levelled with his ear and whispered:
"McGonagall was looking for you in the corridor. I think it's urgent."
Tom looked up confused. Her brown eyes seemed to swallow everything around him; they were like an empty room, looking for an occupant.
He did not want to get stuck there.
But there was something inescapable about her body leaning towards him with such ease and confidence, as if she knew him, had always known him, would always know him. As if she liked him.
There was trust and warmth and something else in the shape of her face.
He did not know why Minerva McGonagall, an insufferable Gryffindor know-it-all he could not stand, was looking for him. He didn't even have a clue as to why she was telling him this in the first place, but something compelled him to get up and excuse himself.
He walked out of the room into the empty corridor, waiting for Minerva to appear but there was no one. Only the statues and the torches.
He was about to go back in the room and rightfully punish that insolent girl, when the door suddenly opened and she snuck out, a mischievous expression on her face.
Before he could even muster a reaction, she jumped into his arms and kissed him fully on the lips, holding him in a vice grip.
He opened his eyes, flabbergasted, watching her kiss him, as his unresponsive lips slowly but surely started moving against hers.
He wanted to talk, to shout, to do anything but stand there, but he actually kissed her back.
It felt like being punched in the stomach repeatedly. Her breaths travelled into his mouth, down his throat, into his depths, poisoning him.
Tom pushed her away and she had the audacity to laugh.
"Sorry, I know I took you by surprise there, but we've got four hours ahead of us and as your girlfriend I needed something to get by. You understand," she said, grinning happily.
Tom stepped back, staggering lightly from the impact of the kiss.
"Whatever gave you the impression that you can come near me like this? And claim to be my girlfriend?" he spat, astonished and angry.
Ginny only ruffled his hair in response, apparently unaffected by his words.
He tried pushing her away again, but he only touched air.
His eyes opened. He was standing upright in bed, his arms extended towards an invisible Ginny Weasley.
Tom Riddle sat there in the dark, feeling the soft sheets underneath him, his heart racing, his thoughts crumbling and regrouping until he could muster a coherent reaction.
Her hair in flames. Her black dress. Slughorn's beaming face at her appearance.
Why would he dream that? Why would he see her of all people during a Slug Club meeting?
Why would he dream...of kissing her? Why was she so different? Why did she accept him so gladly? And why had she jumped into his arms?
It was all so absurd and ridiculous. It bore no meaning, absolutely none.
He surmised he had conjured her in his mind as consequence of her being brought here, in his proximity, trapped somewhere in the Malfoy dungeons, hundreds of feet away, but still close enough to garner a reaction.
An irrelevant reaction, at that, he thought.
What kind of man was he to dream of little girls?
She had not been little in his dream, though. She had been young, but not a child. She had been pretty; common, but pretty. Full of life. As if she had never met him. But her warm brown eyes, he remembered, had still held some reserve as she had entered the room, so maybe she had met him.
When she had looked at him, she had seen someone harmless, someone she cared for.
He would have put the pieces together right then and there, but his head ached and as he lowered it on the pillow once more, he let himself fall asleep, his mind clouded, but too exhausted to continue.
Yet it was true, he was dreaming his memories...and hers.
So...what do you think? Good, bad, let me know:)
