A/N: More fun in this chapter. :D
Disclaimer: It's not mine. I'm not the one with the castle in Scotland.
Fast-Forward
Chapter Ten: Boxes And Boxes
"Scott Reeve, my friend, has been missing since August, almost certainly dead, and yet neither of you thought to tell me?!" Ginny cried, standing. "And that includes you!" she accused, turning to Tom. "I had lunch with you about three weeks in your apartment, and spent at least two minutes talking about Scott, and you never thought to mention that he's dead?"
Her heart hurt. If she had known that it would be the last thing she ever heard of him, then she would have acted differently. She didn't know what she would have done, but she would have done something. Anything was better than a fragile hope that they might still be friends, unknowing of his death.
xxx
Hearing the rattle of Tom getting his keys out, Ginny exclaimed, "No – wait!" and leapt forwards to push his hand away from the keyhole. "I want to do it." She spent a good five minutes burrowing in her numerous pockets searching for it before she could get at it, under several empty packets of chewing gum, not to mention a lot of packing boxes that had been shrunk to fit in her pockets; she pushed the key in the lock… turned it… click.
The door swung open.
Ginny giggled, clapping her hands together.
Two weeks of autumn holidays were drawing to a close (it was now Friday, and work began again on Monday) and that was how long it had taken to sort out all Ginny's things – possessions that, considering she'd only lived in this era for three years, there seemed to be a lot of. However, it couldn't be said that she was moving in so late just because she had a lot of stuff to pack… there was also the issue that it had been a few days of what Grace so wittily called 'being the cause of things that go boink in the night' before she even considered that she might need the rest of her things.
"You are so easily amused," Tom said disbelievingly, shaking his head as he pushed the door open with his foot to carry a box through. The majority of the boxes were minimised to fit in their pockets, but some didn't even fit when shrunk, and had to be carried.
"That's me." Ginny bent low to push two stacked boxes through the doorway, and then went back to get the last box, before closing the door behind them. She eyed the four containers before her. "Right. Where do we start?"
Tom proceeded to take the rest of the tiny boxes from his pockets, laying them out on the floor spread out, and then flicked his wand, enlarging them back up the size.
It was then that Ginny realised that despite all of her cutting-down-crap efforts… she still had so much stuff.
"Oh, Merlin, there's loads of it," she groaned.
"You've still got your pockets to unpack," Tom pointed out, just to make her feel better.
"Bloody hell." She pulled the inside lining of her pockets out, tipping all of the boxes onto the floor. She heard several loud smashes. "Damn. There was probably something fragile in there."
"Probably. Okay – I'll help." Tom nudged a box with his toe. "What's in each one?"
"Er. Hang on… those two are clothes… and that one is shoes… but – wait. No, that's the shoes box… so what is that? Damnit. Okay, I have two shoe boxes-"
"How many shoes do you have?"
"-and that is bathroom-y stuff, I think. Um. Right. That one is books, and that one – the one I just smashed… - is ornaments. That one is school stuff, so we can just not unpack that one… and hide it somewhere, I guess. Maybe sell it. That one next to you is make-up and jewellery, I think. Or it might be music. ARGH." She collapsed on the floor. "I don't know."
"Let's try opening some and seeing what's inside."
Ginny tore a nearby cardboard crate open and peered inside. "Hey," she complained. "This is one of the throwing-out boxes!" She glowered. She was certain that it would be Grace's idea of a joke, to give her loads of boxes full of crap.
"What's this?" Tom reached into the box and pulled out a thin black book that was vaguely familiar. He flipped to the first page. "Property of Ginevra Aiobheann Peregrine," he read.
Suddenly, she knew what it was. For her seventeenth birthday, the first year that she had been at Hogwarts with Tom, Headmaster Dippet had given her a diary – in which she'd only put about three or four entries, but all of those entries were not something she wanted him to read.
"Hey, put it back," Ginny said crossly. "It's in the throwing-out box for a reason."
Tom turned to the next page. "'The fifth of November, 1958'," he continued, tilting his head slightly to one side as he read. "'It's been a week since I was down below the dungeons with Riddle'." He arched one eyebrow. "Well, hello."
"Give it back!" she lunged to grab it back, but instead fell over the box, and landed in a heap at his feet. "Tom, I'm warning you."
"Aw, listen to this," said Tom, smirking and looking very pleased with himself as Ginny struggled to stand up. "'…though I still think that there's more to Riddle than meets the eye'. This is very interesting…" he gave her a smug look. "Your silly teenage fantasies are adorable."
"They are not-" she jumped up to try and grab the diary, but he held it above his head "-silly-" she clawed at his arm, trying to drag it down, but he just switched the diary to the other hand "-teenage-" she let out a roar of indignation "-fantasies!"
Tom gave her an oh-really look. "You had me fooled." He flipped to the next page. "Hm. 'Malfoy and his idiot friends made a bet amongst themselves to see who could get me to fancy them first, so that they could publicly humiliate me. Well, that backfired. Malfoy cornered me in the Entrance Hall to try and snog my face off – but luckily, Riddle blew his brains out'." Tom clasped the book to his chest. "My hero."
"I did not write 'my hero'!" Ginny gasped. "You're making that up!" She grabbed a record-case for music that had broken long ago and threw it at him, which he dodged easily. "Give it back!"
"'I never thought that he, of all people, would come to my rescue. I never thought he cared'. Do you think that he even knows how I feel?" Tom improvised at the end, with a woeful sigh.
"Stop it!" Ginny hurled a bar of weird-smelling soap at him, which bounced off his shoulder – it couldn't have hurt, but he took a step backwards in surprise. "I didn't even like you at that time."
The next entry that he read out, she was horrified to find actually was a silly teenage fantasy.
"Well, well, well." Tom's eyebrows lifted. "'The fourth of February, 1959. Holy shit. Tom kissed me'."
"DON'T READ THAT ONE!" she yelped, running forwards as fast as she could-
She only sprinted towards him because she half-expected him to move out of the way, and was therefore alarmed when he didn't, and she crashed into him with all the force of a sledgehammer-
Stumbling-
And then suddenly found herself pinning him to the wall, her hands wrapped around his wrists, pressing them to the wallpaper either side of his head, her lips mere millimetres from his.
"Let go," she told him firmly, and without any complaint, there was the flutter and thump of paper dropping to the floor. She didn't watch it fall, nor did she retrieve it. She was suddenly preoccupied with the loud heartbeat she could feel in Tom's wrist, her own pulse speeding to match it; preoccupied with his ragged, shallow breath fanning across her face.
"Do you think that unpacking can wait until later?" Tom asked, the corners of his slightly-parted lips twisting upwards in a smile.
Ginny didn't even answer – she was too busy taking his clothes off.
xxx
As a bell rang sharply twice to signify the start of her coffee break, Ginny finally found the address of Celestina Warbeck – currently only twenty-five, which was weird for her – to write and schedule an interview for someone in the office called Gladys, who wrote the music section.
"Stupid book," she complained to herself of the thick tome that was the Wizarding version of the Yellow Pages. "You wouldn't think that there would be more than one Celestina Warbeck, but no."
She picked up a quill and scrawled down the address, taking several attempts at the ridiculously complicated name of her stately manor in Derbyshire.
"You nearly ready?"
The voice of Beth Menzies floated over Ginny's shoulder, causing her to jump, startled, and splodge a huge ink stain over the finally finished name of Warbeck's expensive house.
"Menzies!" the redhead groaned, hitting her forehead repeatedly on the desk of her new little work-cubicle, of which she was quite proud. It had a drawer and a chair and a plant and everything. "It took me ages to write that." She cleaned up the ink mess with a flick of her wand, but then had to write it all out again.
"My bad. Still – are you ready to go yet?" Beth persisted. "I want some coffee."
"Go get some yourself."
"I'll have no-one to talk to."
"Talk to Louise."
"Louise doesn't talk."
"Hey! That's mean. Yes, she does."
"Anyway, she doesn't drink coffee. Or tea. Or anything."
"Neither do I."
"Tough." Beth poked her, hard, in the shoulder-blade with a plastic spoon.
"Where the hell did you get that spoon from?"
"Dunno. Just found it."
Ginny sighed, flinging down her pen. "Fine. I will come and get the bloody coffee with you – if you'll stop annoying me!" she compromised irritably.
"Done."
However, a thought crossed Ginny's mind, and even as she stood up, she made no move to follow Beth to the refreshments area. "Hey, Menzies." She grabbed the other woman's elbow and pulled her back towards her. She glanced quickly outside of her cubicle to check that no-one else was nearby, and then asked tentatively, "…Who does… deaths in the Daily Prophet?"
She had worked out that if Grace, Philippa and Tom had all read about Scott's 'disappearance' in the Prophet, then surely there must be someone in her office-block with a lot of information. Ginny was far too curious for her own good (she recalled doggedly trying to find out who had been the Hogwarts attacker in her sixth-year before Tom gave in and told her that it was him), and when there was a personal mystery crying to be solved, she just couldn't help herself.
"Sshh," Beth hissed, peering around the side of the cubicle into the next one on the left – Louise's work-space.
"She's not in there. Is it Louise?"
Beth rolled her eyes. "No. Gallantree."
Ginny's eyes widened slightly. "Oh yeah!"
"Ohmigod," whispered Beth. "That's Will Gallantree!" She sucked in a gasp, and hurriedly explained, "He works in crime journalism, so he hardly ever comes down to our floor…"
She mentally slapped herself for having such a poor attention span when people were telling her important things. Honestly, if she was any slower, she would be going backwards.
"So… say, hypothetically," she said slowly, trying to sound as innocent as possible, "if I wanted to find out about something, how would I go about it?"
Beth tutted loudly. "Hah. Don't bother." She raised her eyebrows expressively. "He wouldn't let you anywhere near any of his work. Those autopsy articles are like his babies. No touchie." And, as if guessing what she was going to say next, Beth began to list off all the various ways why tricking him wouldn't work. "He's filthy rich – don't try bribing him – he has an evil side like you would not believe – don't even go near blackmail – and trust me, he can't be seduced."
"What about saying 'please'?" Ginny tried.
The response that she received was loud laughter. "Good luck with that."
Ginny's shoulders slumped with resignation. "Damn."
"Why are you so interested, anyway?" Beth asked curiously. It probably wasn't the most normal thing for a fairly-new employee to be insistent on examining the case files for dead people.
"A friend of mine is missing." Ginny left it at that.
Beth paused, and then tentatively asked, "…Reeve?"
"Yeah." Ginny was grateful when Beth didn't push her to explain any further. She sighed. "Let's go get your coffee, then."
Well, that was that great idea down the toilet.
xxx
Ginny pushed open the front door of what was now equally her apartment, and nudged it shut with her elbow, already taking off her coat. "Hello?" she called, kicking her shoes untidily into the cupboard, and dumping her bag on the sofa.
No-one answered her call.
"Hm." She crossed to the window to check for any owls, and was surprised to see a large horned owl with the severe look of a extremely well-trained Post Office owl, clutching in its talent an envelope marked, 'Ginny'. "Oh."
Upon opening it, she found that it was from Grace, saying:
Ginny,
Well, I'm back at school. It's so pretty here in autumn, really, there are so many orange leaves. It's great to kick through, and I had a leaf-fight with the girls in the university apartment next to mine. Two out of three of them like me, I think, but one definitely hates me. Oh, that reminds me! Speaking of apartments, I've got my cat now! YAY! He's small and fluffy and brown and white and he's so cute even though he likes lying in front of my feet so that I fall over him. I haven't got a name for him yet, but I'm going to think of a really good one, and it also has to be a sort of Muggle-y name, because otherwise everyone will be like, 'why has your cat got such a spastic name?' And that would be really awkward.
And Luke asked me out! It's amazing, I know, it's so great! I had this huge test on the nervous system, and I had to remember everything and it was all so complicated, and I had a massive panic attack – you know, and I started hyperventilating and I couldn't stop talking and I went into hysterics and all of that – and then Luke helped me, and he was like, 'whoa! Calm down!' even though it was pretty stupid, because I obviously couldn't, that's why it's called a panic attack, and then to calm me down, he kissed me. Except that it sort of didn't work because instead I passed out – and because I'm at medical school, I know why! I took in way too much oxygen, so my brain was getting foggy and stuff, and then he kissed me, which gave me a shock, so I just sort of shut down for a second. And then when I woke up he asked me out! It's great great great! Honestly, I wish you could have been there, except that not really, because it would be kind of creepy….
And it's annoying because letters here have a word limit so I can only write-
LoveGracexxx!
Ginny chuckled. That was so typically Grace, to view hyperventilating and passing out as romantic. Still, it was sweet, and she was really happy, because Grace and Luke made a cute couple.
The door behind her banged quietly.
"Hi, Tom," she called over her shoulder, composing in her head the answer that she could write. Once completed, she turned and waved the paper at him. "I got a letter from Grace."
"Oh." Tom nodded, moving through to the kitchen to start cooking, as it was already quite late. "What does she say?" Ginny knew that he was totally uninterested, but she was happy that he was humouring her and pretending he cared.
"She's got a cat! And Luke asked her out!" Ginny tossed the letter onto the coffee table, where she could write her reply out later, and then skipped after him into the kitchen.
"Who's Luke?"
Ginny stopped. She'd forgotten that Tom and Luke had never met. "Er." She tried to think of an answer that wouldn't make him feel bad. He's a friend I made who comforted me when you accidentally broke my heart? Somehow, she didn't think that would be very cheerful for him. "Grace's boyfriend," she finally chirped, grinning. "Hello," she added, standing on tiptoe to kiss him.
"Take your time getting around to greeting me," he said, though there was amusement in his tone.
He kissed the top of her head, and then turned back to making dinner. It was ready in twenty minutes, during which time Ginny set the table and told him about her day (excluding the part where she asked Beth about crime journalism), and asked about his day.
"My day?" he repeated, raising his eyebrows. "Uninteresting." He passed her a plate and followed her to the table. "Mr. Flourish has confirmed that I will be promoted to admissions assistant, as he feels he is not well enough to deal with it all… lucky for me."
"It is lucky for you," Ginny said, frowning, unsure why he was treating a promotion so negatively.
"Not really." Tom prodded a piece of chicken with his fork. "Infinitesimally higher wages, and a lot more work."
"Well, you might get another promotion, and then you might get much higher wages," Ginny suggested. "And as for the work – you're really smart. You could probably do it faster and better than anyone else."
Tom shrugged. He looked up at her as though he was going to say something, but his eyes flickered from her face, sideways, to the window. "There's another owl," he commented. "It looks like it's for you."
"Hang on." Ginny had one slice of chicken left to eat.
"I'll get it."
He returned a moment later, holding the letter out to her. "It's from Hogwarts."
"Ooh!" Ginny scrambled to her feet, clapping her hands over her mouth, barely daring to breathe. "My NEWTs exams results! Well, they took their time getting here, but – oh!" She jumped up and down, trying not to be nervous but being nervous anyway.
She took the letter, cringing away from it in her hands as she tore it open. She unfolded it – and looked away.
"You read it," she said, giving it to Tom, wincing in preparation for what she would hear. Without complaint, her fiancé began to read the table of her results, but only got through the first syllable of 'Transfiguration', before she cried out and snatched it back.
Transfiguration – Exceeds Expectations
Charms – Exceeds Expectations
Defence Against the Dark Arts – Outstanding
Potions – Outstanding
Astronomy – Acceptable
Herbology – Acceptable
History of Magic – N/A
Muggle Studies – Acceptable
Arithmancy – Acceptable
Divination – N/A
Care of Magical Creatures – N/A
Apparation – Acceptable
Ginny started bouncing up and down as soon as she read to Defence Against the Dark Arts.
"I got an Outstanding!" she shrieked, handing him the letter and hugging him tightly.
"Well done!" he said after reading it over her shoulder, with her still holding onto him. He smiled when she let go and began her childish victory dance.
"I'm so happy!" she giggled, in case he hadn't been able to tell. "Now I can actually tell my boss my NEWT exam results, and then she might be forced to give me another promotion!" She beamed. "Oh, I'm so evil!"
Tom gave her a secret smile, retrieving a bottle of wine from the kitchen. "I believe a celebration is in order," he smirked.
She knew what that smile meant. "Oh, screw that, get to the point."
Ginny took the bottle of wine, setting it down on the dining room table, and then flung her arms around his neck, pressing her lips eagerly to his; pushing him down onto the sofa, sitting on his stomach, one leg either side of his waist, her mouth gentle at his collarbone.
Shirts slipped off and lay discarded on the living room floor, her weight heavy on his abdomen. Heavy-lidded eyes closed; his head tipped back with a low moan as her lips trailed lower and lower, torturously soft on his stomach. His short, heavy breaths of something close to pain, building up in loudness –his back arching, an involuntary shudder that shook his frame as the tip of her tongue lightly traced his belly-button, the skin of his hip burning hot between her teeth, a strained, desperate gasp of, "Ginevra," bursting out.
She smirked, knowing exactly how senseless she was driving him, and it was only at his last absolutely agonised moan of "Please" that she had mercy, and then it began.
xxx
Morning had not yet risen, and yet Ginny woke. She lifted her head, the side of her face pressed to Tom's bare chest, blinking blearily as a powerful nausea overcame her. "Oh," she groaned, clamping a hand over her nose and mouth, feeling as though she was going to be horribly sick.
At her movement, Tom stirred on the sofa beneath her. "Y'okay?" he mumbled, only half-awake.
She didn't answer – she just nodded. After a moment, the queasiness had passed, leaving her cold and sweating, holding her face with a feeling of dread overwhelming her.
xxx
A/N: Wow, because no-one saw that coming. Lol. I got so many different responses from Scott's disappearance: some were like 'oh no, he's gone' and others were like: 'YES, he's gone'. Weird. I CAN'T WAIT TILL FRIDAY. I'm going on CCF camp, which means I'll be away for two days (no updates, boohoo, sorry) pretending to be in the army and shooting at things. MWAHAHA. I am dangerous.
If you review you get to straddle a fictional Dark Lord of your choice. XD