The party started off smoothly enough. If some of the guests struck Ginny as not well, Narcissa kept the children steered away from them. She met one man, old enough to be her father, who chucked her chin and told her he and his partner had a daughter nearly her age. When she asked who, his mouth tightened and he said she was at home in France. He hadn't wanted to bring her here, that much was obvious.

"Regulus," Narcissa said, her hand on his arm, "don't bore the child."

I can feel his Mark, Tom said from the back of her head. I can feel all of them. He seemed pleased with himself for having selected such a clearly excellent follower as this Regulus and Ginny rolled her eyes at how he felt smug about something he hadn't done.

You were already in the diary when you collected him, she said.

Draco fetched her starters, including a thing with some kind of spread on tiny toasts that she wanted to eat until she couldn't do more than groan and beg for mercy. The band played, and they all danced, and if she didn't know formal waltzes well, a lifetime on brooms had made her physically adept enough to fake it.

It wasn't like that Alecto Carrow could dance.

The thick-necked Carrow twin wheezed with a giggle that made Tom recoil in the depths of Ginny's mind, and when he saw and felt the Dark Mark on the woman's arm he almost hissed his displeasure. Ginny didn't think the woman was 'all there', as her mother would have said, and Narcissa Malfoy's expression when she extricated Ginny from a conversation about blood traitors and ginger hair suggested this was one of the rare points on which Molly Weasley and Narcissa would find themselves in complete sympathy.

Filthy trollop, Tom began to fume. She has no respect. She should be -

You picked her, Ginny said.

I had bad taste, Tom said. Clearly.

You had good taste with Regulus, she said, looking over to where the man stood, caught in a conversation with Draco's father and someone she'd heard called 'Evan.' Evan also had a Mark, Tom told her. Evan was also sane, unlike Alecto.

Despite the conversation with Alecto, and Tom's furious disapproval of the woman's existence that settled like a red film over Ginny's thoughts, the party was more fun than she had expected. Food. Dancing. Friends. Narcissa introduced the three girls 'round to her friends and they all cooed over the teenagers and patted them on the arms as if they were toddlers and reminisced in shockingly dull ways about how they'd enjoyed their own youth, flirting with boys under their mother's watchful eyes. Some of the older women talked about their weddings as if they had been yesterday. Ginny watched Pansy and copied her friend's example on how to deal with the conservative matrons. Pansy dimpled and smiled and blushed at the very idea of boys. So did Daphne. You'd never have known she'd pried Greg's fingers out of her bra shortly before as she turned red and giggled behind her hand as one woman told her kissing wasn't anything to be bothered by.

One old woman complimented Ginny on her pearl and when she admitted Draco had given it to her the woman exchanged a significant look with Narcissa, who smiled back. "I approve," the woman said.

As if anyone asked her, Tom said in a huff. This is the most ridiculous nonsense I've ever been subjected to.

The pleasant part of the evening evaporated when Ginny turned and found herself face to face with a monster.

Greyish skin, no hair, a nose that would give anyone nightmares, all of that paled in comparison to the horror that was the man's red eyes.

Tom, who'd been just letting himself ride along, slammed into action. Don't look in his eyes, he said as he began to do what Ginny later realized was occlusion. The feeling of walls going up around her brain reminded her of a headache, or the feeling of utter stupidity you had after a stressful test when all your thoughts had been leeched out onto parchment and pushed away.

"Miss Weasley," the man said.

"M…my Lord," Ginny stammered out, dropping an immediate curtsey. She'd never been so terrified in her life and she had a version of this man in her head. If her Tom weren't frantically trying to hide his existence she might have been able to summon at least a polite smile. As it was, her jaw trembled and all she could think was don't touch me don't touch me don't touch me.

"Dear Lucius told me of the little girl they'd brought into the fold," he said. Ginny bobbed another curtsey, not at all sure what she should do. "Pureblood, yes? And in the noble house of Slytherin?"

"Yes, my Lord," she said, her voice nearly a whisper despite her attempt to sound as normal as she could. Her terror seemed to please him and he took a step to the right and tilted his head, studying her as a hawk might a mouse. She shivered and Tom burrowed deeper and deeper into her mind as though he could hide in the shadows of her fear.

"I questioned his judgement, I admit," Lord Voldemort said, and her shoulders began to shake. "I thought any child of a family so openly opposed to the way things ought to be could not be a proper Slytherin, yet here you are, with excellent manners and a lovely disposition."

Ginny curtsied again and kept her eyes on the floor. Her head burned with pain from whatever it was Tom was doing and it was all she could do to keep standing upright. Lord Voldemort was nothing like her Tom, nothing like her friend. Nothing at all.

She ignored the quick memory of her roommate on her knees, ignored the flash of Tom torturing a bird, ignored the way he'd taught her to turn nail polish into a caustic toxin with one spell. Tom was different. He was her friend. He was her. He wasn't like this horror watching her as if deciding whether to crush her just on a whim.

"Enjoy the party, Miss Weasley," Lord Voldemort said before he glided away to join a group of adult men. She didn't look to see if they were happy to converse with him. Her legs wobbled and Draco was there, a hand under one elbow.

"Perhaps a drink?" he said in her ear, "and a quick step out to the back terrace?"

"Thank you," she managed to say. "That would be very kind of you."

Somehow Draco led her through the milling people, out the door, into the mercifully cold air and a shadowed alcove half behind a shrubbery. She took the drink he'd acquired on the way and gulped the whiskey. It burned down her throat but left a path of clarity in its wake.

"So that's Him," she said. She took a deep breath and considered what to say. "What an honor to have him at your party."

"Yes," Draco said, just as cautiously. "A great honor."

We have to kill him, Tom said. He sounded more shaken than she'd ever heard him. He's so strong, Ginevra. So much stronger than I am. I'm just… he's what I am after decades of… how are we going to do this.

I don't know, she said. She nestled into the arms Draco wrapped around her and felt his chest rise and fall in a steady, reassuring rhythm. She had Tom and she had Draco and Lord Voldemort hadn't killed her. He'd approved of her, if such a thing could be said. We got rid of the diadem. We'll find the rest.

"What are you thinking?" Draco asked.

She bit her lip.

. . . . . . . . .

A/N - It's an AU and therefore I decided Regulus is alive and sane and living in France with Evan Rosier and their adopted children.