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Seven.

One drop for Harry, she thinks.

Some nights, she doesn't drown in magma, burned and boiled and crushed.

Some nights, her blood runs frosted and thick, an avalanche of snow trying to pulse through her veins.

The air is rusted.

A figure clad in black robes, with dark locks parted to the side, dark eyes coloured with disdain.

Soliloquies that begin with "Dear Tom."

Dark memories that linger before her even after she opens her eyes to a curtain of grief.

Dark memories that now hang on the edges of her smiles when she talks to a boy who she understands like nobody else.

Six.

One for the locket.

The summer is sweet and hot, cradled in the arms of sunshine as a breeze wafts over the familiar aroma of a more autumnal spice. To her right, the still lake breathes its quiet laughter every so often as its inhabitants skim its surface.

"I – you never said anything," he says suddenly, "about me not recognizing you at Hogwarts."

"It's not a big deal." She shrugs. "I understand why you do it. I don't approve of your friends, and they don't approve of me. But – " She starts before breaking off. Is it too much to demand him to choose one or the other? And what if he chooses to let her go? She's the one who stands against everything he believes in.

"But you think I shouldn't segregate my life like this," he finishes her thought.

Slowly, she dips her head down once in a nod. "No," she agrees quietly.

He doesn't answer.

She's only slightly disappointed, because she didn't really expect him to respond.

"Dippet says our OWL scores will be mailed out tomorrow," she says softly, letting the topic go.

"I know," he says, pausing before observing, "You sound worried."

She is worried. There are two years left until graduation – two years, and then the future. And it's not enough time.

It took her two years to even acquaint herself with him – two years, in which they shared perhaps five conversations. And then, three years to build some sort of taboo relationship that she still doesn't quite understand.

She has two years to convince him to become something other than Lord Voldemort, before they part ways forever.

She has two years to save Mum and Dad and Bill and Charlie and Percy and Fred and George and Ron.

Two years to save Harry, Hermione, Neville, Luna, Tonks, Lupin, Kingsley, Sirius, Moody, Fleur –

Two years to save streets of unnamed faces, each with their own sorrows and with their own dandelion wishes, and every day she wakes up thinking I can't fucking do this, it's too much, I can't, I have to, I can't –

"Maybe," she says.

Two years, starting now. Starting with this nebulous relationship they share.

After the Chamber, enough emotions were released for him to feel more connected to her – to spend more time with her.

Enough emotions were released for her to build a blockade between them – a reminder of the high-pitched laughter that would echo in the threads of many a nightmare.

She feels him shift beside her. "You'll do fine," he assures, and there's something honest and awkward about the way he says it that lifts the corners of her lips a little. It's so different from the charming air she knows he assumes with other people, speaking velvet words that melt too quickly for her.

"That's not what I'm worried about." Biting her lip, she searches for words. "It's all moving so quickly. Last summer, it was your prefect badge – this summer, it's OWLs – next summer, you'll get your Head Boy badge…" Her voice trails. "And then what?"

And then it's goodbye Hogwarts.

She thinks about making him promise as she did when they were first years, waiting to be Sorted – promise that, no matter which career path they're sorted into, that he won't hate her. That he'll still be there.

She doesn't say anything.

There's a dream she's had lately – a new one.

It takes place in a ghost bathroom.

There's a broken sink, somewhere in here. Crawling along the side of a tap is a broken vein wrapped around a stitched heart.

Someone serenades it a song sung with a forked tongue.

And the seams of the heart tear and twist, screaming silently as something red leaks from the faucet.

Drip

drip

drip

poorly healed wounds reopened.

Five.

One for the cup.

He breaks the enduring silence.

"You really think I'll be Head Boy?"

She elbows him and raises her eyebrows. "I said it once already. Stop fishing for compliments." She can hear his smile. "As if you didn't already know."

He hums a low note, vibrating gently in the air. "I suppose," he admits with a note of pride that he hasn't managed to completely quell.

"But," she adds, considering a timid Ravenclaw with an honest heart but a faltering lip, "Bert Burring makes an excellent candidate as well."

"Yes," he agrees, mimicking her deadpan, "his stutter's rather authoritative, isn't it? I'll have to watch for him."

She nods along, but when the silence settles, she realizes that she's not ready to give up the banter yet. She doesn't want to think of gravity. She needs a distraction.

"Well, now that that's all settled," she says, releasing her knees and hoisting herself from the ground. "Would you like to celebrate your Head Boy badge with a cup of tea and some pumpkin pastries?"

He lets out a huff of a breath, but she's not sure if it's amused or derisive. "It's unlucky to celebrate a victory before it's secured," he says.

"Don't be so superstitious," she chides. "You sound like a grandmother."

"A grandmother," he echoes dryly. His voice crescendos slightly as he speaks, and, judging by the accompanying rustle, he's just stood up as well.

She nods grimly. "Of the hobbling, knitting variety."

"Hey," he says curtly. "We're celebrating my badge here. There'll be no teasing the wizard of honor."

On the trek back to the school, he takes her hand. He doesn't let go even after they step over the threshold of the castle's grand doors, shoes now clacking against stone. It doesn't really matter that she knows her way around Hogwarts enough that she could manage without him guiding her, not really. Instead, it's become something of a habit.

But still, lately the space between their palms has felt hollow and infinite to her, and it chortles iced needles across the folds of her hands.

Four.

Another for the diadem.

One footstep. Another follows. Someone's taken a step forward. She feels the vibration beneath her own feet.

"We prepared this for you." A voice ghosts through her. "A good-bye present. We started putting it together the moment you said you were going to accept the mission."

A book is shifted into her hands.

"It's – it's a photo album." The voice cracks, and Ginny looks down towards the gift she'll never be able to appreciate.

She sees nothing.

It feels heavy.

The library in itself is a labyrinth that she never walked, never memorized. So many books she can't read – so many chairs left out at haphazard angles to trip on, so many winding shelves that barricade the room. Cluttered. For her, it's better just to stay away.

But today, she ventures in, following her right hand as it runs along the wall, pacing the circumference of the room.

She misses the smell of dusty knowledge. It reminds her of togetherness.

She isn't sure how deep she's ventured into the maze when he calls out to her.

"Ginny?"

Distracted by the musky aroma of golden parchment, she didn't notice his signature spice. Turning towards the source of his voice, she smiles. "Hi."

"What are you doing here? I've never seen you in here before."

The floor hums as his chair scrapes backwards and he takes footsteps towards her. "I missed the smell of books," she answers honestly.

Capturing her wrist, he guides her slowly to his table. "Come on."

"What have you been reading?" she asks as she feels the seat beneath her before lowering herself down to it.

"Just some research," he says vaguely. The table trembles to a thud as he shifts his books around.

As she pulls her arms in closer to her, her hand brushes a book and accidentally knocks it off the desk and into her lap. "Sorry – "

She cuts off short. Her hands know this book.

He takes the thin leather-bound book from her. "Thanks."

And though he's taken it back, she still feels a phantom copy clutched between her fingers.

She knows that book. She had clung to it for a year, nestling it in her pocket and brushing it with her fingertips whenever she felt uncertain.

Please, for the love of Merlin, don't let it be involved with his research. Please let his research be anything but. I don't – I can't – but Myrtle –

She forces a suffocating cloud of quiet over a hammering heartbeat. "That book was rather light," she observes, and it's entirely too difficult to maintain this façade of nonchalance. "What subject matter is it on?"

"What?" he mutters distractedly before clarifying, "Oh, that's not a book. It's a journal I've been taking notes in."

She wants to believe that that's all there is to it.

But that would be naïve, wouldn't it?

Three.

A drop for the ring.

How do you count the notes of silence?

"I'm home."

She knows that voice. She's never heard it laden with so many chords before – his voice echoes with a certain haunted hollowness, tinged with despair, regret, guilt, horror, desperation…. A little bit of everything she's felt lately, amplified and compressed into two words.

I'm home.

"Ginny – "

Suddenly, arms are wrapped around her, tugging her close, and her hair is getting wet, and the fabric of his robes beneath her cheeks are wet as well – is she crying, too? – as her own arms wind its way around his torso, squeezing tight –

"I'm so sorry, Ginny, I didn't – I couldn't – can you – I – "

"Charlie," she whispers. His stuttered words immediately halt as he clings to the silence, waiting for her words. "Thank god you're home."

Two.

One for the snake.

Her ears instinctively pick up his name, a short note held against an orchestrated cacophony of conversation.

"Oh, Tom." A giggle. "You're so clever. I don't know how you do it."

His voice is velvet. "With great difficulty," he promises.

Another giggle. "Stop being so modest, Tom. You're fantastic. For me, sometimes it seems no amount of studying can fix my stupidity."

She sees spilled ink on fingertips, a spreading black cobweb coloring the crevices of her fingers.

Dear Tom, I just don't understand! Sometimes I think that I'm too stupid to be at Hogwarts…

"Don't discourage yourself like that," he reprimands lightly. "I know you can do it. You just have to simplify the spell, break it down."

Don't discourage yourself. I have faith in you. The spell's quite simple, really….

Words tattooed into the flesh of her heart - words that this Tom Riddle never wrote, words that she hoped he would never come to write.

Still, she can't help but hear that Tom Riddle in every word he speaks, and she can't help but hear that Ginny Weasley in the girls he speaks to.

And she can't stand it.

The bell rings.

She gathers her books slowly, waiting for the classroom to empty before she navigates her way through the desks to the door.

And then – unexpectedly – she catches the strands of an aura she's become too well acquainted with.

"Ginny," he says in parting as he passes by her desk.

But this Tom Riddle really isn't that Tom Riddle, is he?

"Tom," she says in kind, and she forgets about robes made of chicken feathers.

She smiles instead – truly, as pure as a bird's song – because it's the first time he's acknowledged her in public.

Dark memories flit away.

There's a countdown.

It starts from seven.

Sometimes, she sings the numbers as they trickle down, slipping from their pedestal – a sort of hum that trails, muttered under her breath to distract her from her plague.

Do

She's not sure when she first began counting, but she thinks it has to do with her mother.

rei

"Ginny," Mum used to say when she was young, "I had to count down from seven to finally get my little girl."

She thinks that's when she fell in love with the number, even if her mum only said that phrase to appease her whenever her brothers left her out of one of their games.

mi

It was the number that saved her sanity her first year at Hogwarts – a number that distracted her from murderous lips.

fa

Mrs. Norris. Colin. Justin. Nearly Headless Nick. Hermione. Penelope.

And herself, as number seven.

so

Today, she counts to seven by years.

la

Seven years with Tom Riddle.

ti

Only a single note separates her from the next octave.

And one for that goddamn bloody diary.

Seven drops of De-aging Potion.

She swallows.

A ten-year-old girl stands, with a pair of haunted eyes that no ten-year-old should ever have to wear.

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Countdown.

Three chapters left.

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