A/N: Thanks again to the S.S Gin'n'Tonic over at FictionAlleyPark. I think it was MartianHouseCat who brought up the subject of violation in T/G. The general ship's conclusion was that, whether or not anything happened in the Chamber (and I'm of the not school here, after all, she was only 11 or 12 and he was still intangible for the most part) Molly and Arthur Weasley would say the worst of Tom.

Thanks to both (come on, people, review!) my reviewers, theMuse and kilohana. I'll look into the end of chapter 1 and I'll probably post a rewrite sometime soon. Thanks for the criticism. I have this planned out and it's not too many chapters, actually.

Inkubus

Chapter 2: Defense Mechanisms

Ginny Weasley hated Tom Riddle. Time had worn on her memory so that she could recall nothing specific, only the one fact, the concrete, inescapable mantra of her parents on the subject: Tom Riddle was evil, he had raped her.

Of course, in the summer between her fourth and fifth years, she knew perfectly well what "rape" meant, and took it at its face value. She had never been told otherwise, after all. She had been violated in the Chamber, and although she had no memory of it, such horrors are often repressed in a child's mind. Or so her parents said. It was constant over that summer, after her first year of school, and recurrent even throughout her fourth year at school. Ginny remembered the very first time she had shown interest in a boy other than Harry; when her mother had met Neville Longbottom. Afterwards, Molly Weasley had only one comment. "Well, he might not be Harry, but at least he's not Tom Riddle." She seemed smugly happy that she had tied it back to Ginny's first year, but the comment brought up connections and inferences that Ginny objected to.

"Merlin's beard, mother, that was nothing." Ginny shouted. "I was twelve. And for the majority of time, he was in a book! When will you realize that Tom Riddle is evil because he tried to kill me and countless others, not because you think he might have raped me." She didn't add: I'm not sure I would have minded. She didn't add: I almost wish he had. She didn't add: I always wonder whether I was anything to him except a route to a goal. There was no use giving her mother more ammunition against her, pinning herself as still besotted with a teenaged dark lord.

Molly Weasley only stared at Ginny, quizzically. "Well, I rather liked Neville. Quite a sensible fellow, if you ask me."

There was an awkward silence. Ginny wondered exactly how much of that statement was a lie and how much was the truth. Anyone who could honestly call Neville Longbottom 'sensible' and be serious about it was on some new kind of magical powder of which Ginny had yet to hear. 

For the next week, however, Ginny heard nothing but 'Tom Riddle is evil', 'Tom Riddle raped you', and 'Neville is such a nice boy' on the subject. Ginny knew; Neville was a nice, sensible boy because he had none of the allure, the charm, the wittiness that Tom had. Neville was as anti-Tom as possible. His single claim to fame was that he was the boy who had won the House Cup for Gryffindor five years ago in his first year, for nervously telling his friends that they couldn't save the school, and being petrified by Hermione Granger.

 As opposed to Tom, who was arguably the best student Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry had ever seen. But Ginny wouldn't tell her mother that.

The most she replied with was a quiet "Mum, will you stop talking about Tom Riddle, please?"

Her mother didn't even look over to her. "Tom Riddle raped you, dear. He's evil."

Ginny took a deep breath. "I don't remember that. I don't remember him being evil. Ever." Her mother would probably explode now, and she would be grounded for the rest of the summer. After all, what kind of fool said that Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Voldemort, wasn't evil?

However, Molly Weasley did not explode. She placidly continued knitting. "You've just repressed the memory," she stated, "It's a defense mechanism." The speech had the casual intonation of a recital; something learned from a book and drummed into memory by repetition. There was a pause, before Molly finally turned to face her daughter. "After all, he raped you. He is evil."

This was, actually, more of a two-sided discussion than Ginny had ever had with her mother about the Chamber incident. Directly after the incident, they had showered her with hugs, and kisses, and backwards jabs at her best friend, Tom Riddle.

"… Unlike that evil Tom Riddle, raping an eleven year old girl!"

"He wasn't evil to me, mummy, he was nice. He listened to me."

"Yes dear," and Molly would turn to her husband. "She's repressing the memory, Arthur. Children often do this, I read. It's a defense mechanism, or something like that." There was a pause. "After all, he raped her. He's evil."

Ginny couldn't help thinking about the comparison to her silent life at home and the confidant she had once had. He listened to me, mummy, just like you never do. "Mummy, what's rape?" Ginny mumbled. Her mother continued chattering about psychological disorders and traumatic situations. Ginny repeated her question, louder. No response. Finally Ginny left the room, disappointed with her family and heartily wishing the Very Secret Diary had not been destroyed. She would have had a lot to tell it – him – now that she was back home.

Ginny clung to every memory she had of Tom Riddle. She was going to disprove, or prove, her mother once she found out what rape was. Maybe she did remember, and just didn't know it.

A look with the family dictionary brought no success. The book was such an old prissy that it wouldn't tell the young girl what rape meant. "Wait 'till you're older, dearie," It responded, and refused to so much as open for her unless she asked it a new word. It was a year before she understood what her mother had been saying all along, graced by Hermione's inanimate Muggle dictionary. 

By that time, she had forgotten most of what happened anyway, and just accepted the horrifying mantra for the truth. Tom Riddle had raped her. He was evil.

However, her decision to hate Tom (for that was what it was and she could just as easily have decided to not accept the 'fact' that he had raped her) did anything but distance her from his memory. It came to be that her every motive was to prove herself not just his victim, and to get what she wanted at all costs, to be independent of all help. In short, to be Slytherin-like.

He raped me, she thought, he used me, abused me, broke me. But I will show him. I will be strong, unusable, and unbreakable. No one will pierce my defenses; no one will gain my confidence without my knowing exactly who he is.

She knew the family history of every first year. She knew the ins and outs of the castle. She convinced Fred and George to give her a look at their map, and memorized the locations of hidden passages. She didn't trust any Slytherins, Ravenclaws, or even Hufflepuffs, without first finding out as much as she possibly could from books about Hogwarts and common gossip. She had a few trusted friends, and even with them she didn't share many secrets.

She decided to be the best student in her class, and she was. She studied hard every night, reviewing the books and her class notes, doing the homework well in advance, isolating herself from her talkative housemates, losing herself in the books, charms, hexes, curses. She went to Hermione for help once a week, reviewing the material with the best of Gryffindor House. Hermione and she became good friends. However, even Hermione never heard about the Chamber incident from Ginny's point of view. Studies gave Ginny a mask of thoughtfulness. She attained peace only through study, and couldn't go to sleep without a book in her hands.

She decided, with Hermione, that they would both go to the Yule Ball. She decided, with Hermione, that they would get the attention of Harry and Ron, respectively. And so, while Hermione had the easy choice when Viktor Krum offered to take her, Ginny took Neville. That was the reality of the situation, although the common story tells it in reverse. Ginny Weasley decided to go to the Yule Ball. Ginny Weasley took Neville. After all, few others would want to go with a third year.

Still, the memory haunted her. Every night, as she fell asleep clutching at the pages of a book, she wished it was a different book, one that did not tell its secrets to just anyone. She wished that it could be more than a book. That it was a book she could confide in and trust. She wished it were the book, the one that would give her no choice but to trust it, to fall heavily into its pages and never again awake.

She wished it were the book that would absolve her of guilt, of responsibility, and let her live in peaceful oblivion. Now she chose what to do; when she failed a test she got an angry letter from Percy, when she acted, it had a direct consequence that she had to live with. With Tom, nothing had been her fault. Six had been petrified because of her, six had nearly died, and she wasn't held responsible in the least. It had been Tom's fault, everyone had been all too willing to blame it all on the Diary.

Of course little Ginny Weasley hadn't taken any initiative. She was just an eleven-year-old girl, a Gryffindor and a Weasley at that. She had fallen behind in her studies, lost sleep and friendships, almost lost her very soul in a delicate power struggle that she was fated to lose from the very beginning.

And none of it was her fault. The Diary was Tom, and Tom was the greatest wizard of all time, so Ginny couldn't have helped but fall under his heady spell. That entity swallowed up all her guilt, all her responsibility easily, nicely, like a drop in a river.

Except, he had raped her. Tom Riddle was evil. She had been used, victimized, torn apart by dark forces. She couldn't let that happen again.

No one could touch her now. No one could break his way into Ginny's subconscious. No one, no one in the entire world could do that, except Tom Riddle.

. .

She sat awake at night, thinking about him. It didn't seem a strange thing to do, for it had never been much different. However, it had never been this bad.

It was winter; she stared at the snow falling outside her window. Something was not right. Her heart felt heavy, her first year played an endless loop in her memory, only this time there was no Tom and she was guilty. She felt the guilt of all her actions, now twice as painful because she hadn't dealt with them before. She pushed away the memory, refused to accept it, but it kept returning. Finally, after midnight, she was able to sleep.

It had happened several more times over the course of the year, her strange depression would come on, and then after midnight it would be replaced by that indescribable weariness she had felt once before. The worst had been the night before she found out that Blaise Zabini had been pulled out of school. Ginny hadn't slept at all that night, fits of tossing and turning alternating with time spent staring out the window, newly guilty and suddenly normal. She was never sure if it was a dream or not, that night.

He had entered silently. That was no surprise. He was the kind of person who would always enter silently, would always surprise you. She hadn't noticed him, concentrating all her attention on the window. It wasn't my fault, she insisted, it was Tom.

"Why did you remember?" he asked. It was hardly more than a whisper, but it rang off in her ears like a filibuster's firework.

She turned abruptly, shocked. That sounded like him. It sounded like Tom.

It was Tom. She couldn't say anything, just sat there, agape. He wasn't supposed to be alive, he was supposed to just be a memory, her memory, silent and comforting, at the back of her mind. Now he was all too real and all too frightening.

"Why did you remember?" he repeated.

"I—I—I had to," she stuttered in reply.

"No you didn't." He was calm, emotionless, in control of the situation as always. This was completely normal his tone said to her, she shouldn't be frightened in the least. You expected this to happen, sooner or later. You wanted me to come back. There's no reason for you to be afraid.

So she wasn't. "I had to be sure they were telling the truth about you," she said with more confidence.

He looked surprised. "And? Were they?"

"Yes. You're evil." I hate you. Right?

"Is that it?" He laughed softly, not his out of place, high-pitched laugh, but a deeper chuckle that didn't send shivers up Ginny's spine. "I would have hoped they would have been more creative than that." He was amused by the situation. It didn't bother him that people said he was evil. He wanted people to think he was evil. Well, he had succeeded; everyone knew how evil he was.

That was not a situation to be amused about. "You raped me," she answered, bluntly. She knew it wasn't the normal sort of statement, but this wasn't the normal sort of situation and at 2:00 A.M. she was too tired to care.

"Did I?" he answered, serious again. "Are you sure?" It wasn't a real question; it was a test.

"Children often repress horrible memories like that," she recited. "It's a defense mechanism."

"Horrible? When was I ever horrible to you, Ginny Weasley?"

"I don't remember." A pause. He was winning. "I hate you, you raped me. You're evil."

It didn't do much to help her cause. "If you hate me, why didn't you forget?" Ginny had no answer. "Was I horrible? Was I your enemy? Or do you remember me as your closest friend and confidant? Was I ever horrible to you?"

"You tried to murder me. That was horrible."

"Did I?"

This was absurd. She knew he tried to murder her, even if she didn't know for a fact that he had raped her. "You had to kill me for the spell to work. You would have murdered me if Harry hadn't stopped you."

"Is that what you remember?"

Ginny tried to remember the Chamber, when he had tried to kill her, Harry and her, but Harry had won, like always. Only, she couldn't remember that, or anything else 'horrible' that happened. The Tom in her memory was as innocent as a fuzzy kitten, all kindness and support for her in her first year, and although she knew that he was playing with her memory, or something, she couldn't really tell how. "No," she responded.

He nodded. "So, is that what happened?"

She yawned, but didn't say anything. As tired as she was, she didn't let go of the ingrained mantra. He's evil.

He took a step closer to her. "Your memory doesn't lie. What do they know? You are the only one who knows what happened. Trust your memory. Memories don't lie."

It was an ironic statement coming from him. "You're a memory," she answered. "You lied."

He smirked. "I'm the exception that proves the rule. Are they right?"

Her precarious grip on reality was quickly fading away into nothing. If she could trust her memories, and they hadn't lied to her many times before, then her parents and the world was wrong. If she was to trust the world, a world that was full of evil but also full of honorable people who had never lied to her, then they were right. But she was the only one who knew what had really happened; she was the only one who had been there. So her memories were the only source of the truth, and she couldn't remember what they said happened. "No," she whispered, giving in to memory. "No, they're wrong."

He smiled, cryptically. "Now you know if they were right. So you can forget."

"No." She stood up, slightly more awake. "After all that, I at least have a right to live so as to prevent it from happening again. I won't forget, so long as I live and there are manipulative, evil people out there."

"But they were wrong," he whispered. "Where is the manipulation, the evil?"

"You made me call the Basilisk. You made me try to kill people," the words caught in her throat and she was close to sobbing. "You made me do that, Tom. I never want to kill anyone again. I want to prevent that."

"Do you want to prevent it? Do you really care that much? Why does it even matter? It's over." On second thought, perhaps standing up had been a bad idea. She thought it would make her seem more decisive, but it was proving to be more of an effort to continue standing than she had bargained for. She woke herself up. This was the time to stand up to her fear, to be strong, not to fall back asleep and give in.

"It's not over," she said. It didn't really matter so much what she was arguing at this point, so long as she was disagreeing with him.  "You're here. It's just beginning."

"No," he whispered. "Not for you, Ginny. Your time is ending. It's time you forgot." She shook her head feebly, but the strength to stand was rapidly draining out of her. She was sure she would fall, any moment now, fall onto the floor with a loud thump and wake up all her housemates. She was about to collapse when someone caught her, and replaced her on her bed. She was fairly confident who it would logically have been, but the rules of logic had been bent for an evening, so she remained unsure. When she awoke, the next morning, he was gone.

She heard about Blaise the next day, from Hermione. It was strange; no one had seen Blaise being taken away from school, but she was undeniably missing. Her things, except her schoolbooks, were being carted out of the Slytherin dungeon that day, by house elves from the Zabini mansion. All of the Slytherins had some souvenir of the girl. And the strangest thing happened in Potions class; Hermione had overheard Pansy Parkinson tell Draco Malfoy that Blaise was dead, and ask him if he had ever heard of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Life had gone on, and Ginny hadn't seen Tom since. She was glad for that. When he wasn't around, she could accept her illusions, he was evil, she was blameless, and everything was back to normal.

It was summer holidays before the insomnia hit again. But this time it was different. This time it was because she had figured out, for the first time, what was happening, and it bothered her.

Tom had found another victim.

And his victim was a Slytherin.

. .

Pansy wondered how she was going to find Tom Riddle again without returning to the Zabini mansion, and making herself fairly obvious. She pondered this between meals, homework, and talking to the mirror. Or, trying to talk to the mirror, for Blaise remained as upset about Pansy's actions as ever.

"Blaise, will you come out of the mirror and have some food?"

Silence.

"I've told my mother you're here, she's dying to see you."

Nothing.

"Why don't you come out so we can use the new broomsticks my father bought?"

No response.

Finally, in a fit of frustration, Pansy grabbed the mirror and threw it across the room. "Blaise, when will you realize that you've got it wrong, Tom Riddle isn't Lord Voldemort!"

A shriek came from the mirror. Pansy ran over and picked it up. A huge crack ran down the middle, and two Blaises were screaming inside. Sighing, Pansy fished in her drawer for something to fix the mirror with. She tried to fix it with spell-o-tape, but soon realized that that was a lost cause, and tried to calm Blaise down. Blaise stopped her hysterics. Pansy sighed and carefully replaced the mirror among her things.

"He's coming," Blaise said, nonchalantly. Her voice was so empty and hollow that it made Pansy shiver. It was as if someone was talking through Blaise, not the girl herself saying the words.

"Who?" Pansy whispered.

"Tom," came the hollow voice again.

"Why?"

"To get me, of course," the voice approached normalcy, and the strange shiver left Pansy's spine. "To get me, and to kill you and your family for going against his will. You'll see. You never cross You-Know-Who, Pansy Parkinson."

Pansy said nothing. If Tom Riddle did come, she had those schoolbooks for him. He would have saved her a trip to the Zabini mansion.