A:N: I've decided to set up a competition! Just because I can. The details are below… onto talking about the chapter. It's kind of sad… but it doesn't really matter. Anyway. Hope you like it!
Competition Details: To translate one chapter from Press Play into Tom's POV. Preferably not one of the one's that I've posted up from his POV. :P That would be cheating. You can choose whichever chapter you like. Or, if you can't decide on one from Press Play, then choose a chapter from Rewind that I haven't typed up in Backtrack yet.
Prize: A TomxGinny one-shot written just for you. You set the scene, you choose the plot, you choose what happens. Or you can just ask for a surprise. Whichever.
Disclaimer: I don't own Ginny or Tom or Hogwarts or the Wizarding World or Dippet or Dumbledore or Flitwick or Slughorn. However, I do quite a lot of other characters, as I made them up, and the plot is entirely mine.
Press Play
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Try This On For Size
He was standing now, as though he hadn't just crumpled to the ground a second ago like a house of cards. Staring at her, with unreadable eyes. He repeated himself, his voice muted and strangled. "Why did you bother?"
For a moment, he looked at her in silence, and those eyes were unreadable because of the sheer depth of raw emotion swirling through at a hundred miles an hour. There were thousands, but she could only distinguish one… agony. Then, as if he couldn't stand to look at her anymore, Tom ripped his eyes away and walked out of the apartment.
Xxx
The day, that you, slipped away
Was the day, that I knew, it would never be the same
Ginny sat on the sofa, clutching a glass of orange juice, waiting for him to come back.
He didn't.
The clock on the wall was a speaking reminder – tick tock, tick tock – that he'd been gone three hours without explaining where he was going or why. She tried not to worry, but worried anyway.
Why did I bother, she echoed his words. Why did I bother – because I love him, and I need him… and I thought that he needed me too.
She let another half-hour escape her before setting down her orange juice (she hadn't drunk any. She felt sick), grabbing her wand and a Muggle torch, and heading out of the apartment after him.
As soon as she was sure that no Muggles could see her, she pulled out her wand, put it flat on her palm, and whispered, "Point me." The wand spun on her hand to point North. "No, stupid," she argued. "To Tom, to Tom!" It didn't move. "Point me… to Tom," she tried again.
This time, it spun again, and pointed in a totally different direction.
She tucked her wand into the waistband of her skirt, pulled out of the torch, and flicked it on, walking in the direction that her wand had pointed to.
The soft yellow light didn't illuminate the streets as well as she'd have liked it to, but it lit up hiding cats and garden gnomes so that she didn't fall over them, which was good enough for her.
A half-moon shone faintly from behind the clouds, dappling silver across her skin.
She checked her wand repeatedly as she wandered blindly through the streets of London, armed (to a Muggle's eyes, at least) with only a fading torch and fear pumping adrenaline through her.
At least, the tip of her wand lit up, showing her that she was nearby. And it pointed… straight to the entrance of a small Muggle pub called The Rusty Spoon. It was an unoriginal name, Ginny couldn't help but think as she went through the heavy wooden doors.
It was easy to find Tom. He was the one slumped over the counter, staring darkly at a beer in front of him. Or, more accurately, one full beer… and about seven other empty ones.
One of the drunks – several, in fact – leered at her and shouted crude chat-up lines from across the pool-table, waving and laughing loudly. She ignored them, and crossed to the bar.
"Hi," she said to Tom, and took the full beer from him. Heart thudding at the dangerous things that could happen if he was drunk, she downed some, and smiled at him, as though she didn't know him or anything about him. "Cheers."
"Geddlost," he muttered, glaring at the counter in from of him.
"Another beer, mate?" asked the bartender sympathetically, and, without waiting for a response, dragged some of the golden liquid from the tap and pushed the glass towards him. "Be nice, this one's pretty," he whispered conspiratorially to Tom.
This one? Ginny scowled. "I can hear you," she told the bartender crossly, "and I can understand. I'm not drunk."
He winked. "I can fix that."
"No thanks." She turned her back on him and dropped herself into the stool next to Tom. "You're being stupid," she told him.
"I said, geddlost!" Tom slurred at her angrily.
"You hate alcohol," Ginny reminded him. "This is pointless, and is only going to make you feel worse in the morning."
"Didn't stop you, diddit?" Tom suddenly snapped. "All those times when you thought I couldn't see you. The Hall'we'en Ball – I saw you getting smashed, drink by drink, when Reeve said some'in' to you while you were dancing wivim. Did Hartwin ever tell you that I was the one who dragged your carcass to safety from the bottom of the dungeon steps after you fell ten metres and hit your head?"
Ginny blinked. She didn't remember.
"Didn' think so," Tom muttered. "An' if you dun remember that happenin', then I rest my case."
"That's beside the point," Ginny tried to say. "This is going to-"
"You," he suddenly snarled, pointing a swaying finger at her, "shuddup. Don' you dare tell me that thissis beside 'e point. What was your probl'm wiv Reeve then? Lemme guess, he insult'd your fam'ly or some'in' else crap. Try this on f'r size, why dun you? Your girlfr'nd goes pissin' around wiv other people… you try 'n sortit out, 'n she has a go at you. You get angry, you nearly kill 'er. You get even angr'r, wiv your-freakin'-self, go out, kill lots 'n lots of freakin' people. So you get tossed into the latest waste bucket while your girlfr'nd dun even give a flyin' shyte anymore. Try that on, yeah? Then come back and freakin' tell me that it's beside 'e point."
A lot of people were staring at them now, including the bartender. Staring at this bedraggled, wasted man muttering furiously about killing people.
"Don't worry," Ginny told them. "Doesn't understand a word he's saying." They didn't look consoled, but they turned away.
"Yezzi do," Tom complained darkly.
"Listen to me," Ginny hissed, bending her face close to where his face was, slumped forwards. "Okay, so maybe I'm being a hypocrite, and maybe I've had my fair share of getting wasted to the point of passing out. However, I think you'll find that I do, in fact, give a 'flying shyte' about you, so to speak. If I didn't care about you – a lot – then do you think that I would have gone to all that trouble to get you out of Azkaban? Do you think that I would have spent every Knut of every Galleon that I have bribing this person and persuading that person to let you live your life again? It wasn't just your life, you know. It's my life, too, and I'm totally caught up in this. But this is ridiculous, and the last thing that I want is to spend all of that time busting you out of prison just to have you kill yourself with alcohol poisoning."
She decided that now wasn't the time to mention how she'd considered suicide only a few weeks earlier.
Tom inhaled a deep breath through his nostrils and huffed it out rapidly. For a second he didn't say anything, but then growled, "Leave me alone."
"Fine," she snapped. "Fine. I will. And I won't be coming back in the morning to drag your arse back home, or to remind you who the bloody hell you are. Screw you." She slapped a Muggle note of money on the counter, knowing that Tom hadn't brought any with him, and then stormed out.
xxx
She went back to Hogwarts after that. Everyone crowded around her, smiling and assuming that she was happy. Reality spoke otherwise. Now she didn't even bother to hide behind a smile to make them feel better. She gave her friends a blank, miserable look, and sloped off to her bedroom to curl up and feel sorry for herself.
"Is everything alright, Alden asks?" Grace said as she came down to get ready for bed. "And I ask, as well. You okay?"
"No," said Ginny grumpily.
"What happened?" Grace said the words delicately, as though afraid that there was some unknown taboo on Tom.
"He asked me why I'd bothered to get him out, and then ran off to the nearest pub to get himself totally wasted," Ginny said bleakly, cutting out the boring details like having him collapse and like him not taking her hand on the boat.
"Oh." Grace changed into her pyjamas and sat on the edge of the redhead's bed. "I'm sorry."
Ginny muttered, "So am I," and rolled over on her bed, so that she didn't have to talk to her anymore. She was being mean, but she wasn't in the mood to psycho-analyse everything.
"You know," said Grace softly from behind her, "you don't have to act like we're your enemies."
Ginny had promised not to tell anyone – it had slipped out with Philippa… but, rolling over to look at her friend again, she said quietly, "He asked me to marry him."
There was silence. Grace's eyebrows rose into her hairline. "And? What did you say?"
"…I said no."
"But… you love him."
Ginny looked sideways, not at anything, just… looking. Just for the sake of looking at something. "I know."
Then she rolled onto her other side, turning her back on her Grace completely now. The conversation, only finished a few seconds ago, replayed in her head, like pressing play on a video she'd only just seen.
He asked me to marry him. What did you say? I said no. But you love him. I know.
Why had she said no? She knew that there had been reasons why, when she had said it, at least. However, she couldn't remember those reasons… and she certainly couldn't remember if that had been good reasons. She couldn't remember if those reasons were worth it – worth the possibility that he might never ask her again.
xxx
A/N: Sorry that it's so short. Hey, guess what? There's a guy in the sixth form at my school (that's like… 11th and 12th graders, to you people who don't live in England) who looks like Tom! Hehehe. He's really tall and he has that sort of shaped face and dark eyes and dark sort of wavy hair and he never smiles. :D…He's hot.
I've just realised that I think that all of my reviewers are girls. Out of curiosity, are there any male readers still here? If so, high-five! I love you. But not really.
I put my school IT password as 'riddle'. Bwahaha.
Please review!
Next Time:
Her Potions grades gradually improved as she focused on her studies almost viciously. It took her mind off other things that made her doubt and hurt inside.
Then, the object of her doubt and hurting appeared in the Entrance Hall doorway after dinner.
"Tom," she said, puzzled. "What are you doing here?"
He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I need to talk to you."
xxx
