by Faith Accompli
Notes and stuff: It's back! From outer space! Kill me now. Anyway, chapter four is back. Chapter five will be up by next weekend, as five and six are in need of a bit of html and then they're postable.
Ginny wrote to him after what Tom estimated to be thirty minutes, give or take a few seconds. His sense of timing wasn't what it had been when he was alive, but he wasn't going to comment on Ginny's lack of speed to the girl. The last thing she required was his criticism, or anything so jarring that it would make her draw away from him to re-evaluate her situation. He still needed her, and he would need her for some time to come.
Her desire to be with him, spend her precious time writing to him, even sleep with him every night, it was--she was even more helpful than he would have believed she could be from the moment her ink had seeped through his pages.
If he hadn't known better, he would have sworn she was deliberately feeding him her energy, breathing new life into him. But she wouldn't intentionally be so foolish after her encounter with him in her first year at Hogwarts, she was somewhat on her guard against him still. She had changed while he had been dead, she had become sarcastic and had a sweetly bitter streak running through her psyche that he knew had not existed before she met him. She had become devious.
She was keeping the events of her first year from him, unaware that he already knew, yet she had displayed none of the bias he expected when it came to telling him of her life. She had made a friend of a Slytherin, a good friend if her tales were true, she had lost the intensely irritating Harry-love she carried throughout her first year, and she was open to him.
He knew every thought, every feeling that flashed through her head when she touched him, he could influence her so subtly that she believed it was her own errant wisps of inspiration that made her behave as she did. He aided her with her homework, it was his mind and his experience that she drew upon in class to perform flawlessly, and all the little ties she allowed him let him sink deeper and deeper in, sending down roots into her mind... leaving him free to enter her dreams while she slept.
Tom! Sorry about the delay, Hermione was trying to talk to me about prefect business and it took me a bit to shake her free and plead off with a headache.
Not tonight, dear, I have a headache? he asked wryly, stretching what empathic sense he had from the diary to judge her mood, to try and see if she was ready. He had thought she was, earlier that day, he shouldn't back away now... this was what he wanted, her helpless and willing at his hands. He wanted her to be willing to do anything for him, lie for him, bleed for him, die for him.
I say thee again, pervert. He could sense her humour apparent first and foremost, followed by her magnanimous thoughts for him. She was almost there, he could chance it tonight.
He had nothing to lose, if it went badly he could strip her of her life in a spell he had known of for some years before his incarceration in the diary. He didn't really want to do that, though. So wasteful, and he had a better plan now. Only if she forced his hand would he kill her.
The girl could be some use, now, beyond a means to an end. I'm a teenage boy, Ginny, you can't expect me to play the martyr when I could make such priceless comments.
Suppose not. Be true to thyself, right?
She had it in one, there. Very true. So what are we working on tonight? Arithmancy? Potions? Anything but deathly-dull Transfiguration?
Tonight we work on nothing. Homework can shove off for a night, we've nothing due until Tuesday anyway, and even with the Hufflepuff game tomorrow we'll have an overabundance of time to finish it later. Now it's just you and me.
Is it a special occasion? he teased, amused by her vehemence. Hardly. But it's my birthday in nine days, what do you want to do for it?
Are you asking me for suggestions or are you asking me what I want to do? He was torn, but ideally he would love to have shape and form again, permanently, and perhaps give her a birthday gift she would never forget. The best way to do that would be to pull, pull the energy and life from her, all of it, right then. Ginny would have her curtains closed, she wouldn't be able to scream or flail, all she would be able to do was...die. But that would be impolite, and there was something to her now, a quality she hadn't had before when he tasted her. So instead of stealing her very life, he would just take a little. A very little...
As much of a shock as it came to him, he was starting to realise that...he cared. Barely, but he cared about her. That was what truly stayed his hand.
Both. Either. But...Tom, I'm sorry, I'm tired. It just hit me like a ton of bricks, I don't know how much longer I can stay awake. Would you be terribly offended if I was to go to sleep now? We can talk more when I regain consciousness.
He felt closer to alive than he had for a long time. He ought to have done this before, he should have remembered how sweet she was, the way her essence made him tingle in a way that had been completely inappropriate when the little redhead was eleven. Somehow I'll survive the night. Sleep, awaken refreshed, and get a whole new case of writer's cramp from the amount of thought you pour into me.
I think I'll do just that.
He felt the diary close over him slowly, waited as her thoughts died down to nothing comprehensible from the outside, as he felt her relax completely.
She was fast asleep, but the annoying girl-children that shared her dormitory couldn't be safely asleep yet, and until they would be, he could not take the risk they would interrupt.
The minutes dragged by, slowly ticking over until he knew it was fifty-eight minutes past twelve. Seeping out of the diary faster and faster, he was as corporeal as he could be by the time the next minute passed. This was the only solid marker of time he had, the moment when the clock would slip from 12:59 to one o'clock. Any wizard more spirit than flesh would know it, any in tune with the ether around them, it was the moment when he could perform one particular old spell by right of magical birth without a wand or any other instrument of power.
Placing a hand to Ginny's bare thigh, the part of the girl most accessible at that moment given that he'd materialised half-under the covers that fell aside to reveal the sleeping redhead in her shirt and plaid pyjama bottoms, Tom whispered, "Incedo veneficus hora."
The witching hour.
The moment when time would stop for an hour, everyone but them frozen between two seconds. Clocks stopped for them, all around the deathly silence of peace, an ethereal glow from everything magical providing enough light to see although colours all blurred into shades of grey.
His was a spell that couldn't be detected by even the most powerful witch or wizard, they all stopped, all but the one who performed the spell and any he was touching. When it ended it was gone, vanished without a trace. It was most suitable for his purposes now, although it would have been so much more use if he could interact with the frozen as they lay or stood, however they had been captured at the second the witching hour happened--he could have killed, stolen, touched... but he was content with this.
Tracing a hand over Ginny's forehead after he had collected an object from the bedside table, he spoke louder now there was no chance of others interrupting, "Expergefacio et exaudio." She blinked awake hazily, more suggestible to him than she would have been from waking of her own free will, ready to do almost anything he wanted. She wouldn't kill for him, she wouldn't die for him yet, but she would hear and obey if he didn't push it beyond reason.
Ginny propped herself up on one elbow and said in a bewildered voice, "Tom? What's happening?"
"A dream, my princess."
"I don't want to be a princess anymore," she murmured softly, reaching up to bat his hand away hesitantly. "I want to be queen."
There was a subtle difference she outlined with her words, something that made him blink in surprise. "And why is that?" When she was eleven, she had told him about her childhood desire to be a princess, something that seemed just a little foolish to her by that age. He had called her his princess, and she had liked it.
She sat up fully now, one leg over his as it had moved naturally there and she didn't seem to find a reason to take it back. "Princesses ride off into the sunset with the charming prince and live happily ever after, but there isn't. There isn't a happily ever after, there's only the now and the then. Queens can control the now."
His Ginny had become quite the philosopher in his time away from her. "You've become wise." Raising her hand, entwining his fingers with hers, he kissed her fingertips slowly. She was no longer an innocent child, and he had no qualms about wooing allies by whatever means necessary.
"I don't feel like it," she admitted candidly, gazing in his direction with unfocused eyes and drawing her hand back after half a minute's heavy thought. "How can you be here?"
"I'm not real." Tom brushed a hand through her hair gently, exhilarated when she rubbed against him like a kitten seeking attention. She was looking to be easier than he had hoped after all... "It's all in your mind, sweet. You're trying to tell yourself something, is my best guess."
"If this is all in my mind, I think you should tell me," Ginny said, head tilting to the side as she slowly tried to make sense of the situation.
She wasn't as easy to manipulate as she used to be. Not quite. "You should just do as you think best." He placed the object from the table into her right hand, taking her left in his again and tracing a line down the centre of her palm. Her eyes rolled back and she smiled, no longer watching him, thoughts floating away to some place he couldn't follow without losing form.
"Best...?" the girl mumbled, anything she would have followed that word with lost in a blissful hum as he continued stroking her hand.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" he asked after a minute, replacing her hand gently in her lap.
"Mmm..." Ginny seemed to regain some of her lost mind, looking at him calmly and then gazing down at her hand. Seconds ticked by as she studied her hand, gnawing on her lip softly as she thought. Then with one swift moment she brought up the knife that he had given her, the little penknife she had inherited from Charlie to sharpen her quills with, and scored from between her thumb and index finger a deep gash, all the way down to her wrist.
Blood welled up and the pain from the slice made her gasp, biting her lip hard.
The diary they shared lay between them, open to the middle so it lay flat. She looked up at him with tear-glittering eyes and slammed her hand down on the crisp white pages, holding it there with her other hand to stop herself from pulling away after she had discarded the clean knife somewhere into the blankets. "Is this what you...what I wanted?"
"Your lifeline..." Tom said slowly, recognising the symbolism in her act. "Ginny..."
"My life and yours," she whispered, not fighting him when he lifted her hand. The blood had soaked into the diary already, leaving the pages clean as they ever were. Leaving him feeling more alive than he had since...he had been alive. It was a heady sensation, and he no longer had the feeling that if he touched her, he would go right through her skin. He had power...
He had her power. "Do you know what you're doing?" Questioning, not pushing. Holding her wrist up and watching the trickle of blood that flowed down.
"No." Ginny's reply was hesitant, uncertain. Her eyes were almost scared now. Vulnerable.
"Medicor." He didn't need a wand for this third spell either, not when he was wrapped in her magic, when he was using the spell on her. Instead he licked the blood from the rapidly-healing wound, a mental smirk forming in his brain when she blushed, another surge of power rushing through him at the taste of her blood. Letting her hand fall, he looped an arm around her waist, pulling her closer. A second time, in the softest murmur before he kissed her mouth, kissed away the blood from her pierced lip, "Medicor."
She responded slowly, cautiously first, then with increasing alacrity as he leaned her over backwards, the pair of them landing gently and Ginny slipping a hand inside the back of his shirt to press him closer.
"I'm bad," she confessed before dragging him down for another kiss.
If he had known she felt this way, if it hadn't been the one thing she successfully hid from him, he would have tried to put in a corporeal appearance far sooner.
Outside the isle of time that had been Ginny's bed, a clock started ticking again. Tom started in shock, caught halfway between pulling Ginny's grey-white t-shirt up, and slowly drew it down again. "Sleep." It couldn't have been an hour already--but he couldn't have her wake up, be truly awake, and remember. She would sleep and perhaps have vague dream-memories, which he could deny knowing anything of if she were to ask him. But he would return. He was growing oh so very fond of her.