Thanks to everyone who's reviewed! Just had my last final yesterday, in which I started just bubbling in patterns on the scantron. Reasons why I will never be a physics major.

Enjoy!


Because it's just like first year all over again, isn't it? Falling in love with the alluring words of an actor, with Tom Riddle, who sings only scripted words and nothing honest –

– even now, when she knows who he is, she's still stupid enough, weak enough, to fall a second time. To lose her heart to a boy just because he let her hold his hand and because he gave her a bloody scented scrap of cloth, because there's something hauntingly sweet about him during those Hogsmeade trips that plague her mind, because when she's with him, when she's with him it's like she can feel again –

And no, she won't let this happen a second time.

She's not in love with Tom Riddle.

She isn't.

Her mind is exhausted, trying to differentiate between this Tom Riddle and that one.

"Ginny."

She smiles. "Tom. What does the world look like today?"

"Easy," he responds. "Light. A little too fairytale picturesque, though, if you ask me – blue skies, white cotton ball clouds."

"I take it your exams went well?" she asks, amused.

"Of course," he scoffs. "Did you doubt otherwise?"

"I wouldn't dare," she assures as they step into Hogsmeade together.

"This time next year," he muses, "we'll be done with our NEWTs."

She's trying not to think about how quickly time is passing. "Where will you be after?"

"We'll see," comes his automatic response before he hesitates, adding, "I think I'd like to be a professor here. I don't see myself anywhere but at Hogwarts."

She nods politely, and redirects the conversation. She doesn't like talking about the future.

At any rate, she can't see herself anywhere at all.

This isn't the first time she's desperately tried to hate, wrenching forward stained memories, one after another, a constant flow of hoarse cries.

Voldemort Voldemort Voldemort – a mantra she mutters under her breath, shuddering each time she utters the forbidden name, waiting for a white mask with cruel lips to appear before her to remind her what it is to loathe.

But she's so tired, and vying for emotion is so draining.

And she thinks, maybe she'll never remember how to hate. Just as she thinks, maybe she'll never remember how to laugh again.

Withered, she thinks. That's the word she's looking for.

"A red light," she answers. "That's all I know. I don't know the incantation. The curse was done nonverbally."

She says nothing more on the subject of her blindness.

"Dippet says that I'll have to wait a few years after graduation before applying to be a professor," he muses into the silence, and the conversation has inevitably returned to the topic she fears. "Eighteen is apparently too young to teach."

She nods. "What will you do in the meantime, between graduating and then?"

"I'm still considering different options," he answers, but his voice has a defensive quality to it that surprises her. She doesn't know what she said to offend him.

Maybe, she thinks, he's self-conscious about his lack of definite plans, that he hasn't got everything sorted out cleanly for once. "Well," she tries, "graduation is still a year away. There's still time to decide."

He doesn't speak for a while, and she decides she must've been wrong in her conclusion – but she still can't fathom what she said wrong.

"I was thinking," he says, starting off with a little too much bravado to convince Ginny that he's as nonchalant as he's trying to be, "of going into research." He pauses, perhaps to gauge her reaction, but she still doesn't understand. "Slughorn recommended – well, with Grindelwald terrorizing Europe, the magical community is collectively researching dark magic and how to counteract it, to help the war's victims. It's a difficult process – it requires a whole different way of thinking, a different perspective on magic to be able to do such a job, and they need people."

He continues endlessly, afraid to give her the space to talk back. But for her part, she's afraid to think altogether, refusing to let the words dark magic cling onto the fabric of her mind.

"And if I get into this project – well, Dippet said that the experience I'd gain working on countercurses would set me up well for being the Defense professor – but that's not what I wanted to say, it's more than that – Ginny, I'd have resources at my disposal that I don't have here, and a team of professional wizards who have dedicated their studies to this cause – and I think, maybe, we could get your vision fixed."

She's afraid of him being anywhere near dark magic – because the temptation is so strong, and the world would collapse again the moment he succumbed to it. And she still doesn't know if he's fooling her, like he did in the diary, so that she might sanction his efforts to study an art that killed her. Like he did in another universe with Slughorn, procuring his knowledge of Horcruxes.

But – what if it isn't the same? After all, did he need her to sanction his actions at all? He doesn't need her. She has no connections to offer him, no secret passageways to happy towns to show him once they leave Hogwarts.

And she longs for his sincerity. A clawing desperation in her heart calls for her to believe him, but she can't – even if his scent lingers on the handkerchief tucked into the inner breast pocket of her robes.

"I've been doing some research here," he admits. Robes rustle, and he passes a familiar book into her hands.

The diary.

Her heart catches.

"Well – you can't read it – but I've been taking notes in it. But I haven't found enough to – well…" He trails off. "Especially since I don't know – "

She is a rope stretched taut, caught between a war of two opposite emotions, neither of which she dares to dwell upon.

"You don't have to do this for me," she says quietly, timidly.

"Well, then," he says stiffly – indifferently – with a touch of coldness? – "I understand. I'll have my book back."

The skin across her knuckles are dry and tight as she grips the journal, as she forces herself to loosen her fingers and release the book, letting it fall onto the table that separates them.

She hears its pages splatter across the wood, and Tom's hiss makes her wince.

She knows for sure, this time, that she's done something wrong.

And even if she is – if she is in – in love with him – it would only be a matter of time until he breaks her again. Abuse her love, and strip her down to a broken body held together only by the tattered remains of a withered soul.

And she won't have it. She won't, she won't allow it, she'll never let him ruin her again.

She's no romantic. She doesn't believe in soul mates, in one true loves. She knows that love comes and goes in tides, and that no sort of honest love would keep someone a prisoner forever.

Regardless, it doesn't help that today she is swept in such a tide, and she doesn't know how to tread water.

"I never thanked you properly, by the way," she says suddenly, the words coming out unsanded and scraping her dry throat. "For the handkerchief," she clarifies as an afterthought.

Never, in the past six years, have they exchanged presents beyond actions and words. They both have nothing materialistic to give, and – at least for her – there is nothing materialistic that she desires. The dynamics of holiday and birthday gift-giving they have never engaged in, and that he would be the one to extend an offering to her…

And she realizes, how can she possibly change Tom Riddle – how can she possibly prevent him from becoming Lord Voldemort – if she doesn't let herself believe that he can change?

That he is, currently, somebody else?

Somebody who could have another future.

She closes her eyes.

It's not reincarnation…

A leap of faith.

it's a second chance.

She can believe in a second chance.

It takes more courage than she's used to having, heartbeat thudding in her ears, as she untangles her hand from his and reaches up to find the curve of his face.

Does she dare…?

Pushing herself up on tiptoe – knowing that if she hesitates, she wouldn't, she couldn't, she shouldn't – she quickly presses her lips against his cheek, ignoring the trepidation pooling in her stomach.

Because maybe she is in love with him. And maybe, even Tom Riddle deserves a second chance.

"Thank you," she says again.

Little fairies leave trails of tinted pink on her skin as they arabesque across their stage. She can feel the heat of their toes pirouetting on her cheeks, and the accompanying flutter in her heart.

For her, words have a way of being forever.

what are you doing to me this this goddamn disease I suffer whenever I'm near you like suffocating

They reverberate in the chamber of her mind.

like drowning in something sticky and warm this infestation that's reduced my mind into a blurry fog get out

They torture her.

Clearmonte

And she tortures herself with them, tracing their letters with her lips in still night.

"You're my favorite sister, you know that?"

It wins a small smile out of her – no small feat in today's grey. "No, I didn't know," she says. "Thanks, George."

He squeezes her hand. "How are you doing?"

"Surviving," she answers. "Or trying to, at least."

"Aren't we all?" he muses humorlessly, and she hates it. She hates not hearing the smile in his voice. It's alien and picks at the wounds in her heart. "You're really going to go back in time?"

"Yeah," she says softly. "How could I say no?"

And there's a short burst of laughter – laughter with no gaiety, laughter to distract them both from the tears trying to escape their prison, from the fangs that pierce their lungs. "You know," he says, "you know, I can't help but think of it as a trade-off. Trading you in exchange for Fred. And fuck, Ginny – that's just not right. It's fucking wrong."

She shakes her head, releasing his hand to wrap her arms around him. "No, George, it'll be all right. I'll come back," she promises. "I'll come back as a long lost aunt, and I'll teach you and Fred everything you taught me – I'll teach you how to scale up the side of the Burrow, the secret passageways of Hogwarts, and how to properly make a mud pie."

"It's not the same," he says.

She can't argue with that. "It'll be all right," she repeats.

He sighs, encasing her in his own arms. "You know," he says, "it's bloody weird having to be comforted by your baby sister, when she's the one who's losing everything."

But they were all going to be losing everything – and she doesn't say it, because she knows he's thinking it as well.

She has upset him.

The kiss was too forward of her, and she should've hesitated, she should've listened to the anthem that reason was chanting in her head – no, no, no, no.

But she's always been rash, and despite her endeavors to engage him in conversation, he remains rather aloof during their Hogsmeade treks and – to her horror – she feels his gaze to be more calculated, like he doesn't trust her anymore.

They're already well into the first semester of their final year. She has more fingers than she has months left with him, and she's destroyed the progress she's built over the previous years in hastily brushing her lips against a freshly shaved jawline.

And because she can't bear it, she pretends that nothing's wrong. That he's always been so distant with her, that his gaze has always been analyzing everything.

Because when she thinks otherwise, a painful shock rips through her and tears the seams that hold her soul and body together –

The shock of slamming against unforgiving concrete, falling after a blind leap of misplaced faith.

In a matter of days, the Hogsmeade visits would cease altogether with eight words –

I don't want to see you ever again.

Each word he spits is another dementor's kiss placed upon her lips.

"Tom – "

"I said, get out." There is no velvet in his voice, not anymore. There's never been any velvet in his voice – not for her, not when he speaks to her – but right now, his voice is the opposite. A jagged blade, unpolished, chipped edges.

"Please – "

Her own voice hangs – a broken whisper that falls on broken ears.

And a knife – jagged, unpolished, chipped – lodges itself beneath her ribcage.

Her soul is smothered.

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Here's to hoping the world doesn't end in a few days. Happy holidays everyone!