Allison had disappeared. Thanks to Fred and George- and then, later on, to standard war-time procedure- Ginny knew almost every secret passage in the school. She knew the quickest way to get from place to place and was sure that she would've been able to cut Allison off several times, but it seemed like the castle had swallowed the other Hufflepuff whole.
It'd taken Ginny too long to put the pieces together, and so, after a few minutes of searching for Allison, she began tearing off for the Head's common room instead. Even if she did somehow, by some miracle, manage to beat Allison there, the situation would be so suspicious that Riddle wouldn't hesitate to figure out what Allison had to say, no matter how much Ginny pleaded with him to ignore her. Ginny was too late and her heart plummeted at the knowledge.
It was all over. She'd failed. Riddle was going to kill her, and then, later on, all of her friends and family- everyone that she'd ever loved, all because she'd been too stupid to see what was right in front of her face. Allison had warned Ginny away from Mason from the first time that his name was mentioned, and Ginny had underestimated her friend- her friend who was nice to everyone- enough to think that it was for the stupid, shallow reason that Mason was strange.
Still, despite knowing that it was too late, Ginny pushed herself faster, tearing up a staircase and almost running into several statues as she took corners too close. Ginny didn't think she'd ever moved so fast in her life, but when she heard voices as she approached the portrait hole, her heart still broke a little. She hadn't fooled herself into thinking she could get there on time, but this undeniable proof that she was too late absolutely killed her.
Now with feet like lead, Ginny trampled the rest of the way to the portrait. Her legs ached and her lungs were burning after having run so fast so far, but she hardly noticed in the light of the worry that was eating away at her gut. Riddle wouldn't do anything as long as Allison was there, and, maybe if Ginny used her words well enough, she could manage to stay alive- to leave Riddle hating her rather than murdering her, but the chance was so slim that Ginny half figured she might as well not try at all.
"Are you okay?" the pretty girl in the portrait asked. Ginny only shook her head.
"I won't be," she muttered under the breath, before collecting herself a little and saying the password in a louder, clearer voice.
Everything went silent.
Ginny looked up and saw a calm, smiling Riddle kneeling in front of Allison, who was sitting in one of the overstuffed leather chairs with tears in her eyes.
"Allison, please ignore her and go on," Riddle said, gently reaching out and settling his fingers under Allison's chin, making her look up and into his eyes. Orion had mentioned Riddle practicing Occulamency, and with Allison trusting him so whole-heartedly and freaking out like she was, a first year could probably find his way into her head.
"I-I-" Allison hiccupped. She blinked several times.
"Mason wants Ginny to hurt me," Riddle said smoothly. He leaned a little bit closer to Allison, and Ginny's hands tightened into angry fists when he exhaled right next to her lips, breathing, "What else, Allison?"
For a second, Ginny was frozen, but when it sunk in that her boyfriend was practically seducing the truth out of her best girl friend, she stalked forward, demanding, "Riddle! Let her go!"
But Riddle wasn't listening. He was gazing into Allison's eyes in a way that would've made Ginny jealous if she didn't know exactly what was going on.
Angrily, Ginny stalked forward and grabbed Riddle by his tie, yanking the Head Boy so that he was facing her, looking into her eyes instead of Allison's.
"What are you doing?" she hissed, grabbing onto his tie more tightly when Riddle tried to snatch it out of her hands.
"Allison," Riddle said- Ginny could hear him struggling to remain polite enough to use her first name- "Please leave us now."
"B-but-"
"I have everything that I can get from you," said Riddle. "Now let me speak with Ginevra."
"Ginny wasn't d-doing anything," Allison cried, making Ginny want to go over and give her friend a huge hug. Even if she was angry at Allison for not keeping her mouth shut- whether or not it was actually her fault- it was still nice to have someone supporting her. Still... Ginny was almost glad that Riddle wanted Allison gone. Even if Allison's presence would keep Riddle in check, Ginny didn't want the Head Boy to keep messing with her. "She said she c-couldn't h-hurt you. It w-was Mason."
"I know," Riddle said smoothly- so smoothly that Ginny knew he wasn't telling the truth. "I don't blame Ginevra for any of this. I just need to speak to her alone."
Ginny took a deep breath and, with what she hoped wasn't too forced of a smile, told Allison, "Don't worry, really. I knew you overheard us, and I don't blame you for coming to Riddle. We'll just need to talk for a little while, and everything will be fine."
Allison took a deep breath.
"Okay." She backed away, her eyes trained on Ginny, who was still holding on to Riddle's tie, and then turned and darted out the portrait hole.
The second that she was gone, Riddle ripped his tie away from Ginny with more strength than she thought he had and then got briskly to his feet. Ginny didn't dare to move as he stalked away from her, any pretense of calm completely evaporated. He kicked over a coffee table. Cursed under his breath. Waved a hand and sent several chairs crashing into a bookshelf with wandless, nonverbal magic that Ginny didn't know if Dumbledore could manage.
All while Ginny stood in the middle of the room with shaking hands and wide eyes.
"Mission," said Riddle lowly, dangerously. He spun on his heel to look at Ginny, and Ginny balked when she saw that his beautiful gray eyes had gone crimson. "Your friend tells me that you are on a mission."
Ginny shook her head furiously, but couldn't find the words to contradict what he was saying, to say anything at all to make this sound better than he was making it out to be.
"You came to this school in decidedly unlikely circumstances. The first time we met, you were terrified of me though I gave you absolutely no reason to be. When you learned what I had done to Mulciber, you were strangely unsurprised," Riddle said lowly, so easily that Ginny knew he'd thought all of this over numerous times before.
"I-" Ginny squeaked out, but Riddle took a giant step closer to her, and Ginny shut her mouth immediately. She was hardly afraid of anything anymore, after living with so much fear for so long during the war, but a raving Tom Riddle, no matter how much he had changed, was one of the most dangerous things she could think of. It would be stupid not to be terrified.
"Orion told you that I was suspicious, and I have no doubt that he also specified exactly what it was that I was suspicious of. That necklace you gave me, a necklace with a legendary amount of magic stored inside, has very, very little of that original magic left. As I'm sure you have heard, time travel is one of the very few acts that could have rendered such a powerful artifact useless to me."
"No one said anything about-" Ginny blurted, finding her voice for the first time and cringing at how high it came out.
"What else could it be?" Riddle interrupted harshly. He stepped forward again, and Ginny backed up accordingly, knowing that there was a wall only a few steps behind her. He was going to have her trapped if he kept moving forward. "A mission, Ginevra, and one that entails bringing me harm. Wherever you came from, I was well-known enough to prompt you to come to Hogwarts and put yourself in danger- danger that you were obviously well aware of- to get close enough to harm me." He smirked and bitingly finished, "Somehow, I doubt that the current wizarding population of Norwich fears me quite so strongly."
Ginny didn't know what to say to that. She'd been right about Riddle figuring everything out. Of course, it wasn't surprising that he did, not in the least. The Head Boy was the smartest person that she knew, and he'd already been suspicious enough as it was.
"Speechless?" asked Riddle. He bit out a venomous laugh. "That's a first." He took a shaking breath and, looking straight at Ginny, demanded, "As I am obviously correct, give me one reason why I should not kill you right now."
"Allison-"
"I'll wipe her memory," Riddle interrupted strongly.
"No," Ginny said, shaking her head. She tried to speak, but lost her voice for a moment. Riddle looked on with false amusement as she rallied herself enough to say, "I was going to say that Allison… Allison told you it wasn't my fault. You were digging through her head... you know what I said to Mason. That I w-wouldn't hurt you."
Riddle laughed her words off like they were ridiculous.
"Does that matter now? You're a Hufflepuff! I've no doubt that you are simply too weak and pathetic to complete your mission. Or perhaps you haven't found a way to destroy my Horcrux and are discouraged. Either way, no matter what your position is on harming me now, you came to this school with the intent to, most probably, kill me. You lied to me and manipulated me and were dangerously close to convincing me that the blather coming out of your mouth was true. I hardly think that any current inability on your part compels me to pardon you for humiliating and degrading me-"
Ginny closed her eyes for a moment. This was everything that she'd done wrong all pouring down on her at once, all of the things that she'd felt guilty about laughing in her face because Riddle was right. She'd been a liar and a hypocrite and even though he was wrong about the reasons she still wanted him alive, it hardly mattered that she cared so strongly for him now, not in light of what she'd done to him in the past.
She was tempted to give up and let Riddle kill her, because Ginny was certain that no arguing on her part was going to change anything, yet, the Head Girl found herself cutting Riddle off, saying in a fairly composed voice, "I'm not unable to do anything. Or at least I wasn't."
Riddle stopped talking.
"I mean, maybe I was, but I could have destroyed your Horcrux if I'd wanted."
"No you couldn't have-"
"I have a sword," Ginny said. "Gryffindor's sword. And it's infused with basilisk venom- one of the things that can destroy Horcruxes. So, if I really wanted to kill you, I could have trashed your ring."
Riddle looked surprised at this for an instant, but it didn't take him three seconds to think up an argument.
"You'd need both my Horcruxes to kill me. You don't have my other one, and destroying the ring would take away any opportunity you would have of getting it. My ring is intact only because you were biding your time-"
"I wasn't, I swear," Ginny argued, pleadingly now. "I still could have destroyed it, and then… and then snuck the location of the other one out of you. With Veritaserum or something."
"And then what? I have your necklace. You would not get back to your own time without it…" Riddle trailed off, then shook his head. "No. You wouldn't. The necklace has so little power left in it that you would be trapped here anyway. I suppose that is one thing in your favor, although it hardly matters in light of the dozens of things you have against you."
Ginny's blood went cold at Riddle's words as he blankly stated something that he thought she already knew. She didn't know what she'd been thinking when people had been talking about how little juice there was left in that necklace, but the possibility that there would be too little to send her back to the future had never occurred to her. She'd always figured that Dumbledore would have known better, that whatever trick he'd pulled that linked Riddle's death with the necklace would release an extra burst of energy or something, but there was something about the way that Riddle spoke, like he knew the chance of Ginny's getting back to the future was absolutely zero, that had Ginny believing he was right.
Maybe it was stupid, but she almost wondered if Dumbledore hadn't known this would happen. Befriending and then killing someone really wasn't his style, and really, his reasons for choosing Ginny to come back had been flimsy at best…
Had Dumbledore picked her not to kill Riddle, but to save him? Did he sense that, after everything that had happened her first year, Ginny would somehow be able to reach him when no one else could? Had he lied to get her to go back in the first place, fully realizing that killing Riddle would eventually make her almost as sick as the thought of taking out any of her other friends?
It was such a Dumbledore thing to do that Ginny wasn't sure. It was rather manipulative, but Dumbledore tended to be so positive that his way was the right one that sometimes he didn't consider that it might not be the one someone else wanted. Ginny couldn't even fault him for it, however, because, more often than not, he was right.
Unfortunately, even though Ginny now had an unending amount of questions, it definitely wasn't the time to be thinking about any of them. "So you admit that I could have destroyed your necklace and then extracted the location of your diary from you by force?" asked Ginny, getting her mind back on track.
"It is a possibility."
"You wouldn't care either way, would you?"
"Not in the slightest."
Ginny took a deep, frustrated breath, one that exhaled out into a sob that she desperately tried to cover up with a choked-sounding cough.
"I… I know you're mad that I've been lying to you, but I swear that I haven't been wanting to kill you for a long, long time. I mean… almost the first time that we really talked, I realized that you weren't totally heartless, and you're so smart and… and you, that I started actually liking you, and I've seen you as a friend for a while now...
"And really, all I was supposed to do was gain your trust enough to get your Horcruxes, but I did more than that, didn't I? I wouldn't have had to bother with the whole 'going out' thing, or the Christmas presents, or going down to the Chamber with you, if I didn't really, actually care about you. You know that you were trusting me anyway- you trusted me at least a little bit almost right from the start- and even though I screwed up badly, I can't believe that you actually think I can act well enough that you wouldn't have noticed at some point."
Riddle tensed.
"I do think that you can act that well," he said sharply, after a second.
"If you knew what you'd eventually become, you would know I wouldn't kiss you unless I really liked you," Ginny said desperately. "That I wouldn't stand you any more than necessary unless I genuinely cared for you."
For a moment the Head Boy didn't say anything, and then, angrily, in a voice laced with fury and just a little bit of what Ginny thought was hurt and betrayal, Riddle lowly accused, "I trusted you."
That was all he needed to say. Those three words indicated that it didn't matter what Ginny felt or what was or wasn't real. She'd still used and deceived and manipulated Riddle. The base of their relationship was lies, and she'd been feeding him constant crap for the last few weeks. Riddle had trusted her more than he had any other human being ever, and Ginny had to go and throw it right back in his face.
More than being afraid, Ginny absolutely hated herself at that moment, probably even more than Riddle hated her. From the first second that the Head Boy started showing any sign of decency, she had worried about what she was doing, how much of a backstabbing phony she was turning herself into, but she'd kept plowing forward anyway.
Ginny took a deep breath and closed her eyes as what she had done really sunk in.
"I- I know," she whispered, "and I'm sorry. I messed up, and, crazy as it is, you've treated me so much better than I've treated you." She took out her wand and closed her eyes for a second before looking up and locking eyes with Riddle. "I don't have anything else to say, and I haven't given you a reason not to kill me, so go ahead. Try. I dare you."
"Very well, Ginevra."
Riddle raised his wand, and Ginny held hers loosely in her hands, fully intending to defend herself and yet not able to move when he moved his hand in a familiar motion and lowly, angrily said, "Avada Kedavra."
Ginny's legs might as well have been made of lead. Green light filled the room, and she simply stood there, petrified and absolutely sure that she was going to die.
The curse crashed into a bookshelf five feet to Ginny's right. Far enough off that there was no way that the shot missed by accident.
Ginny looked up to see Riddle looking at her with loathing so deep that she felt it all the way down to her bones.
"Go," he growled, looking at her like it was her fault that she was still alive. "Stay with your Hufflepuff friends, bunk with Orion Black. I don't care. Just get out of here."
"Riddle-" started Ginny.
"NOW!"
Shaken with surprise, Ginny quickly moved towards the portrait hole, not bothering to grab anything from her room; she wasn't going to risk the chance that Riddle would change his mind. At the last second, Ginny remembered Riddle's ring and, with shaking hands, pulled the chain from around her head and tossed it behind her, glancing over her shoulder and saying, "Keep that away from Mason. He wants to destroy it. And… and that sword I was talking about… it's in my top drawer. If you want to make sure I don't use it."
Then Ginny opened the portrait and began walking away, her heart beating quickly and her hands shaking. She had no idea why she was still alive or what she was going to do, but did know that she'd just been given a free pass. Riddle hadn't killed her, and even though Ginny was clueless as to why, just that little knowledge gave her a faint sliver of hope.
Of course, the look of pure loathing on Riddle's face pushed that aside in an instant, and although Ginny was relieved that she wasn't dead, she was also devastated. Ginny had never realized how much she needed Riddle. If he did stick with his decision to leave her alive, the Head Boy would disappear from her life entirely.
There wouldn't be any more walks with him to breakfast. He wouldn't stare at her in classes. Wouldn't smirk or make any acerbic comments that had Ginny grinning or laughing at his strange sense of what could almost be considered humor. There wouldn't be any more kisses- not like there were many of those in the first place-, no more handholding or talking or sitting by each other. He wouldn't bother visiting Addison with her anymore, help with homework would be a far off dream, and those strange moments when she surprised him with the better aspects of human nature would have dissolved entirely.
Every step that Ginny took brought on another thing that she would miss about Riddle, and every new thing made it harder and harder to keep herself from crying.
It was almost surprising that she didn't run into anyone sooner, with how distracted she was, but Ginny still didn't expect it when she rounded a corner and only avoided bumping into someone because they reached out and caught her shoulders with their hands.
"Ginny?"
Ginny swallowed hard and looked up to find herself staring into Abraxas's Malfoy's concerned blue eyes. His voice was tentative because Orion had ordered him away from her to try to keep Riddle happy, as stupid as that seemed now, and Ginny knew that he was going to run away as soon as possible- he always listened to Orion, and now he thought it would help her if he left her alone, so of course he wasn't going to stick around- but Ginny reached out and grabbed his arm before he got the chance to make an escape, holding tightly enough that she doubted he could get away if he tried.
He didn't. With his free hand, Abraxas reached for Ginny's chin and tilted her face a little, then asked, "Are you crying?"
"No," Ginny said, shaking her head. She wasn't. She was holding back tears. There was a difference. "I'm just… I'm…"
She had to stop.
"Ginny," said Abraxas. "You don't cry..." He trailed off, then his eyes lit with realization, his voice turning angry as he asked, "What did Riddle do?"
"Nothing."
"This isn't nothing," Abraxas argued fiercely. "Merlin, you look like you just faced death itself and escaped." Ginny blanched, and Abraxas didn't miss it. "Ginny! Tell me what's going on."
Ginny blinked several times and looked at Abraxas. She felt dazed and confused, but a small part of her brain registered that he was someone she could trust, someone who wouldn't get tangled up in her mission like Mason, or who would try to listen and understand instead of attempt to solve her problems or get himself deeper in the action like she felt Orion did occasionally.
Maybe it wasn't very smart, but the secret was out anyway, so Ginny grabbed Abraxas's arm, led him into an abandoned classroom, and let him hold her while she told him everything. Not just the facts like she did with Mason or Orion, but Ginny went way back and blabbered about Harry and her friends and what Voldemort did, and then up to where Dumbledore asked for her help, and through all of her first conversations with Riddle and when she started feeling guilty, where she began realizing she didn't hate him, how confused she was when Abraxas mentioned Riddle's jealousy, and then how she felt when Riddle finally kissed her. She told him about the diary, how she'd fallen in love with that piece of Riddle and how scared she was about doing it again, but how she couldn't get him out of her head since then, and how now that Riddle had said that the necklace couldn't bring her home, she wondered whether or not Dumbledore had planned this all from the beginning.
To Abraxas's credit, he never interrupted. He just stared at Ginny in shock as she went through most of her life, her entire mission, and everything that had led her up to that point. Even if she and Abraxas hadn't spoken for a while, even if she'd kind of pushed him away when her mission had started catching up with her, Ginny still trusted him wholeheartedly enough that she said everything without restraint, that she never once doubted what she was doing.
When Ginny was finally finished, Abraxas closed his eyes and exhaled quietly, his entire face even more pale than usual, ghostly white like she had never seen it.
"He still cares about you," Abraxas finally said. "You aren't dead, and that means there's at least a tiny part of Riddle that doesn't completely hate you. This will work out; I swear it will, but… I don't think you should push it now. You can sleep in Slytherin's common room if you're fighting with Mason and not interesting in seeing Allison. Orion will make sure no one messes with you, and I doubt any of Riddle's friends have heard about what happened yet, so they'll still be wary of hurting you. Then… we'll figure something else out. Okay, Ginny?"
And that was it. No more questions, no suggestions, no 'Are you mad?'s. Ginny hugged Abraxas tightly, no longer quite on the verge of tears, and then nodded.
"Yeah," she said hoarsely. "That'll be great."
Abraxas forced a smile- one that was nervous and a little weak, but still bright enough that Ginny gave him a little smile back. He sounded so sure when he said that Riddle still cared about her, that not everything was lost, that Ginny forced herself to believe him.
If he was right, if there was still a chance, no matter how small, Ginny was going to take it and hold on with everything she had to make sure that it didn't go away. She hadn't realized it before, not when she had Riddle and everything was great, but now that he didn't trust her, that things were falling apart so quickly, Ginny fully understood that she couldn't let the Heir of Slytherin slip away.
