A/N: Firstly, this is quite a freaky chapter. More censorship. Fluffy, though. Don't be alarmed. And secondly, what's happened to everyone? Not to sound arrogant, but I used to have loads of people reading this, and now… I dunno. Sorry if I got you bored or something.
Disclaimer: Get the idea into your head. I don't own it. Now move on.
The Letter P
Chapter Sixty: P is for Possessed
"What – you mean, am I bothered by the fact that you have a second soul living inside you that sometimes turns demonic and tries to kill the people around you?" Ginny asked coolly. His eyes snapped to hers. Dark eyes were suddenly bottomless again, glowing like coals from the burning fire. She took hold of one elbow and looked up into his chiselled face. "Not in the slightest," she said softly. And then, fathoms below, Ginny saw the bottom to the bottomless pit, glittering with obsidian.
He looked straight into her heart-shaped face. "Ginevra…" Then, blurting the words out as if he was scared that they were going to bite him, he said quickly, "I think I lo-"
DONG. DONG. DONG. She saw his lips move, but couldn't read them. "Damn. Sorry," she apologized. "I forgot about time passing. I have to be back to the common room, I'll get in trouble." She said sorry again, and then kissed him again. "Tell me later," she repeated, smiling; but as she scurried down the stairs, little did she know that she'd never hear him say it again.
xxx
An early April sun caused the green glow of the light from the Lake, above the Slytherin common room, to gleam brighter on the stone tiles of the sixth-year girls' dormitory. A blonde was on her bed, doodling on a jotter pad; a brunette curled up, her nose in a large book; and a small redhead on the ground, flicking through the pages of homework, checking for mistakes.
"I'm bored," said Flora, lifting her head from where it was resting next to her notebook.
As Ginny opened her mouth to say something in return, there was a fluttering of wings and a small knocking noise came from the tiny doors on the side of the room. As the Slytherin dormitory was underground, all through the dungeons there were small chutes that owls flew down into and then waited patiently behind little doors until they were opened.
The seventeen-year-old Prefect rolled to her feet and then crossed to the door of the owl-chute. Opening the doors, a large, elegant-looking tawny owl flew into the room and landed upon the desk with a dignified air.
"That's…" Flora spluttered. "That's Gulistan's owl!"
Gulistan? Ginny racked her brain for a few second, before remembering that Gulistan Kurtz was the handsome Ravenclaw for whom Flora had a crush bordering obsessive.
"Really?" she enquired. "Hm."
Flora scrambled up and hurried to the owl. "Hello," she said breathlessly. "Have you got some post for us?"
The owl boredly extended a leg, to which was attached a faintly-yellowing letter.
"Ooh!" Flora exclaimed with a squeal. "Thank you!" she tore the letter away from the bird and began to eagerly open it.
"Hang on." Ginny frowned at the front of the envelope, which was pointed in her direction. "What does the front say?"
"Huh?" the Slytherin holding the letter looked confused. She flipped it over, and as her soft latte eyes scanned what was written on it. Gradually her pretty face drained of colour. "G… Grace," she finally stammered.
"Yeah?" the brunette looked up, seemingly not having been paying attention to anything that was going on.
Flora held up the envelope. "Grace," she repeated quietly. And indeed, scrawled untidily across the front were the words Grace Hartwin.
"Oh." Grace held out a hand. "Give it here, then."
Her hand trembling slightly, Flora passed over the letter. Grace took it and clumsily ripped it open. Then she began to read, as Flora and Ginny waited patiently.
After a moment, Grace gave another small 'oh' and sat on her bed.
"Well?" Flora demanded, her tone more angry than Ginny thought was necessary.
"Um." Grace glanced again at the letter in her hands. "He says… he says that, er, I'm… well. To be concise… he wants to go out with me."
Ouch.
For several painful moments, Flora didn't move. Then her eye twitched. Then her eye twitched again. And then she shrieked, "WHAT?"
Ginny was suddenly immensely worried for Grace's health; she leapt forwards and grabbed Flora's arms, thus restraining her from attempting murder.
"You're not…" Flora gasped out. "You're not considering it, are you?"
The brunette bit her lip. "I don't know." She looked anxious. "I mean, I don't like him, but… but this what I need to show Alden that I don't care."
"I apologize for interrupting, but I see the smallest flaw in this fabulous plot," Ginny chimed in, from behind Flora. "You do care."
"Yeah, but he doesn't need to know that, does he?" Grace snapped.
"That doesn't matter!" Flora cut in abruptly. "She's not going to say yes." She glared at the taller girl. "Are you?"
"Flora…" Grace tried.
"NO! You're not going to!" Flora exclaimed hysterically. "Three years, Grace! Three years I have liked him, and you know that! Please!"
"I don't actually like him! I just want to prove to Alden that I'm over him-"
"Which you're not," Ginny piped up helpfully.
"-I mean, we're not going to kiss or anything-"
Flora tore free from Ginny's grasp and flew at Grace; wand drawn, pointing dangerously; brown eyes narrowed. "You – wouldn't – dare," she hissed vehemently.
Ginny yelped, and jumped at Flora, dragging her back. "Whoa! Bad crazy blonde!"
"Please, Flora, only for a while to show Alden that I-"
"Leave my lovelife out of this!" Flora snarled. "You know how I feel about him! You stupid cow!"
"Flora-"
"How the hell could you do this to me?" Flora shrieked. "What, have you been sneaking around and flirting with him behind my back, trying to seduce him the whole time? How long has it been going on, then?"
"Flora, you're being ridiculous!" Grace yelled.
"Ridiculous? RIDICULOUS? I'm not the one who's going to break two hearts in order to settle a stupid tiff with her boyfriend!" Flora shouted.
"HEY! It is not a stupid tiff!" Grace snapped. "He's an arrogant idiot, and, to be frank, I'm sick of him! He's always nagging on at me to do this, and do that, and be better behaved, and not to be so weird! I can't help it if I'm weird, and I told him that if he really fancied me, he was going to have to see past that! But he's too much of a retard to go along with it! I'm TIRED of it!"
"And so you're trying to make him jealous." Ginny shrugged. "Well, it makes perfect sense."
"You stay out of the fight!" Grace bit out. "You have no reason to get involved! You have a perfect relationship! Private cuddling and – and – hugs when you think no-one else is looking and-" she strode furiously across the room and wrenched something from Ginny's bed, who made a small noise of protest, "-and bloody poetry!"
CRAP, how did she find that?
Ginny went bright red. "Keep him out of this!" she snapped, snatching the poem away and stuffing it in her pocket.
"Ooh, I love you Ginny, you're marvellous, Ginny," Grace mocked in a high voice that no-one could possibly ever associate with Tom Marvolo Riddle. "Yeah, we get the idea! So shut up and stop rubbing it in my face that he's perfect!"
"Two things, Grace!" Ginny shouted. "One: I have never rubbed it in your face! And, two: he is far from perfect!"
"So what was that I just had, toilet paper?" snapped Grace sarcastically, staring pointedly at where Ginny had crammed the poem.
"He is not perfect," Ginny repeated adamantly.
"Give me one example of how he isn't perfect," Flora said angrily, cutting in with her slice of cake.
Well, how about we start with the fact that he has an alter-ego that murders teachers? Then, hey, we can follow up with his wonderfully charming personality!
Ginny kept quiet.
"Exactly!" Grace shouted. "You haven't got any idea, have you, how it feels to lose someone you care about?"
Her blood ran cold.
How… how dare you.
"You shut the hell up." Ginny's voice made penguins cold. "Whatever you've been smoking, it must be really strong. You know that my life is far from perfect, and yet you have the audacity to pick on me! You know that the only reason I came to Hogwarts is because my whole family and everyone I cared about was murdered in front of me. Tom is just about the one good thing in my life right now, but even that's too much for you! Screw the fact that you've got a home and your family and your friends; never mind that you're rich and that people love you; never mind that you'll always feel safe and happy! The fact that you've had everything in your life served to you on a silver plate doesn't count for anything, does it, because all of that's trivial to the fact that I have a boyfriend and you don't! Isn't that right? You only care about yourself, don't you? Since you and Alden fell to pieces, I've been the one who's been hit hard. I have to ferry between you, I have pick up the broken shards once you've shattered. And I'm bloody sick of it. And do you think that this ingenious plan of yours will make it any better? No, is the answer, it won't. I'm just left wondering why you can't let sleeping dogs lie and move on, for God's sake!" Ginny yelled.
Tom had made her forget about what she'd lived before. When she was with him, she could just pretend that she'd been at this Hogwarts for six years, and that when holidays came, everything would be fine. Now she was forced to remember. Blood – pain – war – screaming – Harry – mum – Ron – dad – Luna – Hermione – Harry -
Grace ducked her head; when she raised it again, Ginny was alarmed to see tears glowing in her blue eyes. "I love him," she whispered.
And for some reason, the middle word in that short, emotional phrase struck a spear deep into Ginny's heart, digging a wound that stung and stung and stung for reasons she couldn't even begin to try and understand.
xxx
Luckily, Grace wasn't a person to hold grudges. Soon after the argument, the two Slytherins apologized, grovelled, and their friendship came out of the situation stronger. Not only this, but Grace seemed to see sense. She rejected Gulistan, much to Flora's delight. She was even getting on better with Alden. As well as all of this, she was becoming herself again – cramming herself full of food, dancing, and bouncing around twenty-four-seven, that is.
"Well," declared Grace as they headed up from Potions towards the Great Hall for lunch. "I think that for Alden's birthday, we should go to a park and have fun and make daisy-chains in the fields and-"
"-and then," said Ginny, mock-enthusiastically, "we can vomit rainbows! Hey, why not even a bunny or two?"
Grace huffed. "Fine," she said haughtily. "What do you want to do?" she asked, turning to the birthday boy in question.
"Not including a nice, long visit to the library?" Ginny teased.
Alden rolled his brown eyes. "Very funny," he told her. "No, I'd just be happy hanging out with you guys."
Ginny noted that, finally, it was you guys as opposed to you, which generally indicated her, and not Grace. She smiled at this.
"Fine." Grace shrugged. "Don't expect any presents, then," she teased. A thoughtful look crossed her round face. "I wonder what's for lunch… I hope there's sausages. I feel like having sausages today. I'm in a sausages sort of mood."
Ginny laughed; turning to her brown-haired friend. "Don't worry, dearest, but I'm sure that-"
"Kill…"
The voice rang clear, and Ginny froze. Her blood ran cold. She knew now what the voice entailed. She'd thought it was over. Seemingly not. But what now? That was the real question – what now?
"Are you okay?" Alden frowned, looking over at her.
"You're sure that…" Grace repeated, trying to continue the conversation, with an ambiguous wave of her hands.
"Er – m'sure that they're'll be sausages," Ginny said hastily, "buuut, right now, I have to go."
"Okay," said a bewildered-looking Grace, but by the time that the one confused word had left her lips, Ginny had disappeared.
She ran away, up the stairs, veering around corners, and shoving through small crowds of alarmed students, who leapt out of her way, as many had come to recognise that wild expression of move now or DIE commonly present upon Ginny's freckled features.
She didn't bother following the voice. She had worked out that it would take her to where Tom had been… possessed, if that was the right word to use. And the Prefect wanted to know where he was, not where he had been.
Oh, if there was ever a time to have Marauder's Map… she thought desperately as she sprinted up the stairs towards the library – towards, that is, the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, where Tom would be doubtlessly headed.
If Tom's even still Tom.
Her breath was coming shallow; she was slowing down to try and ease the stitch that was building in her side from her sudden burst of speed, when something moved in the shadows, and there was a muffled groan.
Ginny gasped, needing no confirmation that the soft, slightly lilting voice that had groaned in the dark corners of the hallway was that of the person she was looking for.
"Tom," she cried, swooping towards him like some bizarre, concerned bird of prey.
He was slumped inelegantly against the wall, his arms at a sharp angle, over his stomach and holding himself tightly; his face, a contorted mask of pain.
People were staring now; squinting into the darkness to see the sight of a barely-conscious, twitching Head Boy, and his girlfriend, hissing his name frantically.
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
"Can you hear me?" Ginny whispered urgently, grabbing his shoulder.
Then his eyes flashed open, and Ginny almost jumped backwards in fright – the complete lack of sharp focus that they usually held, red-rimmed, totally black, and somehow blurred. Then they flashed, and she saw the person she knew – a snatch of agony, of raw emotion, flickering through the features that she knew, and then he collapsed.
"No," she gasped out, and dived to catch him. He was lighter than she expected – but he was still pretty damn heavy. He dragged her down with him, and then she was kneeling on the ground beside him.
Now a large crowd had gathered; pointing, staring, whispering.
"What are you looking at?" she snapped at them, and then, as quickly as possible, dragged Tom through a nearby tapestry.
A groan pulled itself from Tom's mouth as he started to wake up again, and Ginny pulled him to his feet. He leant heavily on top of her; she wound her free arm around him and started to pull him up the secret passageway to the third floor.
Ginny was determined to take him to safety. However, this did become more difficult when his twitching transformed into fully-fledged shuddering – shaking – muttering at high speed – hissing angrily –
"Come on," she whispered to him, and then they were out of the tunnel, hurrying across the corridor, going through the Head common room portrait hole (Ginny snarled, "OPEN" at Robin the Rich; he didn't question her authority) and stumbling up the stairs.
His legs were giving out – she couldn't hold him up – he was falling – and then he staggered by himself to the bed and crumpled upon it.
Oh Merlin have I just KILLED him?
He wasn't dead.
But when he proved that he wasn't dead, Ginny had no way of knowing how to help and if it was the slightest bit better, him being alive.
Pulling up tight in a ball – curling long fingers into twisted claw shapes – clenching the sheets – shaking uncontrollably – snarling – hissing –
"Tom!" she shrieked, kicking into action and running across to him when she saw him digging his nails into his arms; blood blotting his shirt-sleeves. "Tom, stop it!"
A strained choking noise came from the young Heir of Slytherin as he twisted to stare up at her.
Eyes – flashing – black – dark – blank – bleary – unfocused – sharp – evil – pained –
"Get…" he gasped out, "get… the (censored)ing hell out…"
"No," Ginny said stubbornly, trying to find something to calm him down. "I don't give a damn about your pride or-"
"I will kill you!" Tom snarled. "What part of that do you not (censored)ing understa-" He cut himself off as he seemed to choke again, and then curled even tighter into a ball, squeezing his eyes shut.
He was starting to shake again – so hard that the wooden posts of the four-poster bed were trembling against the floor. His eyes were open, more red-rimmed than ever, and the whites of his eyes were totally black, though red-tinged. It was something out of a Muggle horror movie. It was every child's nightmare.
The seventeen-year-old redhead did the only thing that she could think of doing. She sat beside him on the bed, grabbed one of his claw-formed hands and held it as tightly as she could, whispering endlessly to him, "It's okay… it's okay…"
Tom began to hiss – Ginny could understand it as Parseltongue. "Kill them," he was saying in a voice that wasn't his own. "Kill them all. Leave no survivors. Murder everyone." But then suddenly the words were changing – sometimes he said it in English, sometimes in Parseltongue, twice in French, and once even in what sounded like Irish, but all the same words: "Don't hurt her. Don't hurt her. Don't you dare (censored)ing hurt her."
Keeping one hand in his, she laid her cheek on the old sheets beside where his cheek was pressed into the mattress and gently flattened his soft, fluffy dark hair, smoothing it back from his pale, damp forehead and kissing the top of his head.
She had no idea of how long she lay there. Slowly the shuddering subsided to a small tremble, and his breathing slowed. He was asleep, and Ginny heaved a sigh of relief, before allowing herself to drift to sleep beside him.
xxx
The first thing that registered in Ginny's brain as she was dragged reluctantly from sleep was the sharp, panicked, and rather alarmingly high-pitched word of "Shit!"
She blearily opened her eyes and frowned.
The speaker wavered into focus, and Ginny saw that it was Tom, who was sitting up with his face pale and his eyes wide. Then, seeing her wake up, he gasped and pushed a hand roughly backwards through his hair, dropping down to sit on his heels instead of kneeling next to her.
"Oh Merlin," he muttered, setting his face in his hands. Raising his gaze, he glared at her. "You have no idea how scared I was, do you?" he snarled.
"Er." Ginny sat up, scratching her head. "Well." Scared?
"Try to see this from my point of view, for a second," Tom told her agitatedly. "I sometimes get… I sometimes kill people. By accident. I know that I've been… I don't know, possessed, shall we say. All that I remember is the person I l… the person… my… my girlfriend, refusing to leave. And then I wake up, and the first thing I see is blood, and my girlfriend next to me, unconscious, not moving, and… and, and - for God's sake!"
Ginny now felt awful. She bit her lip. "Sorry…" she mumbled.
"You idiot," Tom sighed, and then he pulled her into a hug, resting his chin on her shoulder.
"That's me," Ginny agreed softly, resting her temple against the side of his strong jaw.
There was a silence – peaceful – and Ginny felt that it would be bad to break it, but she was curious.
"Tom, it's not usually like that, is it?" she asked gently. She guessed this, because he hadn't cut his arm with a knife – or hers.
He twisted his head sideways to look intently at her. "No," he murmured, after a long a pause.
"Why not? Why was that different?"
His expression was bleak and he tore his eyes from hers. When he finally replied, it was hard to hear. "Because I resisted."
Ginny leaned back into him. Did he just give in, all of the other times? When he felt the agony of his ex-brother rising inside him, did he simply stagger to the Chamber of Secrets and then let go?
"Why didn't you resist before?"
"You ask too many questions."
She turned to look seriously at Tom. "Why didn't you resist before?" she repeated, setting a pause between each word to stress the inquiry, to make sure that he answered this time.
Tom released a short breath and quietly tangled his fingers with hers, turning her hand over and observing it carefully. "Because before, I didn't have anything that I needed to protect."
Ginny's heart swelled. "Protect?" she whispered. She recalled his furious, hissed words earlier: don't hurt her. Don't you dare hurt her.
Tom didn't answer. He pulled her closer, holding her comfortably in his arms. They sighed as one, simultaneously, closing their eyes, intertwined hands, and silently both wondered what the hell was going to happen to them.
xxx
A/N: Aww. How sad. But sweet. But slightly weird. Sorry that this has sort of gone all supernatural now. Oh well. At least I didn't make him a vampire. :) Please review.
Next Time:
I wonder what ole' Dippet wants with me now, she mused as she continued down the corridor to the secret corridor that would lead her very close to the Headmaster's office.
"You don't understand, do you?" said Professor Dippet wearily. The way that he said it, it wasn't even a question. He began to explain.
Ginny's mouth fell open.
XXX