The title and the verses in the summary and at the end are taken from Brookes More's translation of Metamorphoses by Ovid.
For greenglassmountain, whose Tom/Ginny Greek Mythology AU got me thinking of other doomed mythological pairings. And is there a romance more doomed than Narcissus/Narcissus?
the end.
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Everything is dark. It presses against him, surrounds him, a haze of impalpable mist and echoing silence.
A long time later, or perhaps no time at all, a flat surface becomes apparent through the gloom and the quiet. The floor seems to be made of stone, a sheen of water gleaming over the surface. It reminds him of the Chamber, where rivulets of water always spun across the flagstones, pooling beneath the enormous grey feet of Salazar Slytherin's statue.
After a few moments — hours — days — months — years, it occurs to him that perhaps he is in the Chamber. There is nothing to see beyond the long black shadows, but it's easy enough to imagine serpentine columns rising towards a ceiling lost in darkness. Easy enough to imagine the beautiful rooms and winding corridors above, hallways full of light and whispers and laughter.
Hogwarts, he remembers. Home, if home is anywhere. Oh, how they adored him there. They had been blinded, at first, by their age-old traditions and his filthy Muggle name, but then he had been oh so lovely, so brilliant, so powerful.
Is he still? He isn't sure. There is no one here, no way to tell. He is perfectly alone in the unformed nothingness.
When he thinks of the future, his mind wanders.
Time is strange here. It holds no features, no end, only a slow, persisting present. Only a lugubrious now, where he is bound to the wrong side of the intransigent past. Only the unceasing spill of water, swift and black.
He looks down, peering into the flow, and for a moment — or perhaps several, or perhaps none at all — he sees her looking back.
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He expects her to beg, to kneel crying before him as she dwindles away, but she doesn't.
She had tried to fight him off, pathetic attempts that were more irritating than amusing, that tempered his glee at his victory. Then her strength withered, until she could neither weep nor curse him. Now, she lies on the stone floor, black robes and red hair damp with water and ink, cheeks shining with silent tears. She stares at him as she wastes away, her face unmoving, her eyes cold.
It's the most galling thing. More than her exhausting stories, her inane complaints, her little rebellions. How can someone so small, so beneath him, look upon him as though she isn't?
There is something almost incandescent about it, something he can't quite name. He doesn't know what it is, and the uncertainty irks him.
When she closes her eyes at last, he brushes the thought aside. What does it matter now? Lord Voldemort has won, and she is nothing more than an echo.
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She loves him.
He knows this, even as she fills his pages with fairy tales and verses of her precious Potter. Even when she starts to drift through the day aching for sleep, dreaming of it, her head heavy and shrouded. Even when doubt creeps from her heart, drips down to her hand, to her quill, to her ink. Even as doubt gives way to caution, and caution to fear.
She'll worship every blade of grass beneath his feet, if he asks her.
How she loves him, his little shadow girl.
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At night, he visits her. The moon shines into her room, and he shines with it. His features are pale and luminous, blurred around the edges like a cloud of ink in water.
He hovers just over her pillow, his face close to hers. Into her ear, he whispers stories he favours, myths that aren't quite myths, parables of his own devising, lullabies in a forgotten tongue. It is only fair, he tells her, after she has subjected him to her tiring tales. She shudders and asks him to stop, and if he can pat her hand, he would have.
Dear Ginny, he says. Oh, my sweet. My silly girl. We've only just begun.
Doesn't she know there is no getting away from him? Wherever she goes, so will he. Where he points, she will follow. It is futile to object, tedious to weep.
Soon her voice fades away. Her words dwindle as if she were a nymph on Mount Cithaeron, skin shrivelling, bones turning to stone.
Perhaps she is. It is all the same to him.
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Reflections, he has come to learn, are perpetually changing. Photographs are always taken in the past, as are glances in the mirror. They can only show him as he was, days or hours or seconds ago, but never as he is now.
There are little minute differences that cannot be captured in the present. Red hair tangled and messy one moment, then combed and pulled back the next. Bruise-like circles under her eyes that come and go. Pink cheeks turned pale, nearly grey in their pallor.
His smile has changed too. He wonders when she'll notice, whether she will see how they've grown imperceptibly wider each morning. He wonders if she'll assume it is hers that changed first, or if she'll question if it is his that had and she followed suit.
There is something disconcerting about seeing his reflection's lips move before his own. It feels unbalanced, so naturally he rectifies it.
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Red pours out, stains robes and skin, pools at her feet.
She shivers as a gust of wind sends feathers and dried leaves scuttling along the grounds. But her hands remain steady, still holding the drained rooster. He watches, mesmerized and a little awed, as the last drops of blood fall one by one.
When he lifts his head, he sees a mirror of him made of shadows.
She smiles, and it is his smile.
She laughs, and it is his laugh.
She meets his eyes, and they are the same. Brown — a warm brown, rather like sunset, like kindling wood ablaze — but almost black in the half-light of midnight.
What a beautiful thing, he thinks, to see one's own happiness at the moment of its happening.
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It is all too easy to slip into the role of confidant, friend, protector. He lets her talk, listens to her stories, showers her with paltry sentiments, and her heart wells for him. She is so starved for affection and love and all those petty things that she yields to him with little more than silvery words.
She isn't beautiful, but she is blank and lily-white, an empty canvas for his brush, a girl of clay to mould. He shapes her as he shapes himself. Forms words with her mouth, steals her hands for his own.
When he finishes, they look like twins, or lovers, or both.
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On the ancient flagstones, polished by ink-black waters, he shutters into existence — the diary and Lord Voldemort, parchment and memory, the first step towards his future.
Time is strange here. He is aware that it is passing, but it does not feel as he remembers it. There is time before — real and short and over. A past he can look at whenever he likes, but he can never touch again — Hogwarts. Home, if home is anywhere at all.
And there is time after. There is now. Moving, unchanging. It might be mere moments — or possibly hours, maybe days — or months or years. It is all the same. There is little to be conscious for, little to do but remember. Locked in a prison of blank pages, lost in memory, stirred only by the promise — no, the certainty — of power.
And then —
Small, eager hands graze the cover. The leather on the spine cracks. Pages flutter against fingertips.
Ink on paper, and she falls into memory.
Everything is white. It presses against him, surrounds him, sharp and bright and vivid.
Hello, Ginny Weasley. My name is Tom Riddle.
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who then fifteen, might seem man or boy —
unequalled for his beauty.
if he but fail to recognize himself,
a long life he may have, beneath the sun.
NARCISSUS AND ECHO