by #Nea
Leaving behind something more
¸,ø ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ ø,¸¸,ø ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸
Time passed in a blur for Tom as he looked more and more forward to the next meeting with Ginny. It was almost as if she was keeping some inseparable part of him with her. He still held his Death Eater meetings, but the planning didn't seem so interesting anymore - or important even. Sometimes, he would go so far as to wish that the meeting was over so that he could be with Ginny and watch her act casual and carefree, even around him, as if her little glass ball of innocence wasn't really made of glass, or if it was, it was a kind of unbreakable glass. And he felt that when he possessed her, in a way, he was able to borrow and hold on to that glass ball as well.
Sometimes, though, he managed to catch himself thinking about her, and wishing himself to bring himself to ruins, and at those times, he resented her for it. At those times, he would see her, with her perfectly freckled skin (which is contradictory in terms anyway) and white teeth showing through a friendly smile, but she would be walking through fire, as tall as herself and as bright as her hair, and he wasn't quite sure what his mind was telling him, but the image had an ethereal beauty about it. The image was so far away, though, that he pushed it away at those times.
Tom knew that Ginny was a good girl, in the sense that she did what her parents wanted, she studied hard, and tried to do things for the good of the general population, and it baffled him constantly why she never whispered a thing against him being Voldemort. Surely, she understood that it wasn't good for the world for him to become Voldemort, and then, what? At least, she thought she understood - she was one of those muggle lovers, but whenever he watched her on the grass or her fiery hair blowing across her face, it didn't seem to matter so much anymore.
And Tom hated Ginny because she made him indecisive, hesitating...
Even so, his own desire of possessing that little glass ball would not let him go find somebody truly good and fitting for him. He didn't want to let go of that bright smile or that cheerful laugh. Heck, he even liked it when she patted him on the back or gave him a hug - they didn't seem forced and acted out like the other girls he met.
So he continued staying with her... telling himself that she made him look good. After all, he needed a girlfriend, and who better than somebody who was willing to go along with his plans?
Ginny sat on her bed, reading a book for her Charms homework. Her feet swung as she frowned and puzzled at the assignment. Surely, the Charms homework during the Harry Potter era was more exciting...
She glanced over her night stand again. There was a lamp, some books, a couple pieces of jewelry and hair things, and her time-turner. With a jolt she remembered that she would have to go back soon, but she also reminded herself that the school year was almost over, and that the graduation from Hogwarts was a more... satisfying end... then the middle of the school year.
She counted the days left, anyway, and she came up nine days short.
Oh, well, Tom would understand. It wasn't like she was going to tell him to find out either way. And she was definitively going to do her best to have the most fun with the fun she had left, before returning to Harry and Ron and Hermione and Voldemort, before returning to the time of the seventh child, the only daughter, and the girl who had a crush on the Boy Who Lived.
There were nine days before the end of school. Tom counted. He had wanted to tell her yesterday, when the number was round and perfect and whole and ten, but in a sense, nine was a more wholesome number: it was the largest of the single digit integers, and it was a perfect square and it wasn't like he could go back in time.
He wanted to tell Ginny about his plan - his whole plan to become Voldemort and his final plan to become Voldemort, the part that involved mass destruction and hysteria, but he wanted her to understand, or at the least, accept him even after he does it.
He even thought about her not accepting the idea that he was going to become Voldemort, but he had turned away from that thought quickly. Now, though, as the moment draws nearer, he started contemplating about it.
"Tom," Ginny's voice pulled him back to reality, the here and now instead of that distant future he planned. Her breath was ragged from running up the stairs and there was a flush on her face. As she turned her head up, Tom could see a glisten at the corner of the eyes.
"Tom, I love you," Ginny said as she through her arms around him in a startling hug, holding on as if he was mist that could simply wisp away.
And words in Tom's head fell apart the way blocks balanced on a taut rubber band would after the rubber band was released. He leaned down and smelled her hair, instead, that delicious scent of tangerines: she must've washed her hair today. As they pulled apart slowly, he realized that she was wearing new clothes and carrying a bag as well, but his mind refused to register them.
"Look, Ginny," Tom started after balancing the blocks in his head again. "In nine days, school is going to end, and in nine days, I'm going to start the final part of my plan to become Voldemort." He paused for a breath without quite looking at her. "And I want you to be there with me."
Then he looked up, almost tentatively, at the flame colored hair to her nice new outfit, at the same girl that has been there for him in the past six months. In that section of his life, she might have been the reason he hung on to life, or she might have been the reason he wanted to conquer the world, but in that moment, her eyes were so wide that the whites of her eyes seemed to be all there were, and she balanced herself on her back leg, poised to run away.
He was momentarily shocked. "Ginny," he murmured, stepping towards her.
"No, Tom," Ginny cried. "No, Tom, you are Tom. You're not Voldemort - not Voldemort." Then, she looked him again with a glint of insanity. "Or are you Voldemort already, with the evil book, and the attempts to wipe out muggle-borns, and trying to kill Harry, trying to kill me! Tom - no, you are Tom aren't you?"
"Ginny, Ginny!" Tom managed to grab Ginny and he was holding her at an arm's length, not sure if hugging her would only scare her away more. "Ginny, I'm Tom. I'm right here, remember?" After Ginny seemed to regain sanity and knowledge of the current situation, he continued. "I have always thought that you knew that I was going to be Voldemort, didn't you?"
Ginny's head hung, and she leaned towards him again, trying to regain the courage - or the memory, even - of what she wanted to say. "Yes, yes, I knew, but..." And here, she looked up at Tom with a desperation that almost overwhelmed him.
That was when he made his decision.
"Alright, alright, Ginny, if you don't want me to be Voldemort, I won't. I love you, Ginny." Tom leaned down to plant a kiss on Ginny's lips, and he hugged her tight. Even so, she seemed to be leaving like the wind.
Her lips curved into a small, sad smile as she stared into his eyes. "I guess this is good-bye forever," she whispered under her breath just before she left.
And Tom saw her vanish right before his eyes.
He stared at the empty space for a moment, and he tried to explain to himself the disappearance logically.
Then, he tried yelling out Ginny's name again. Maybe she could be coaxed out of her hiding...
And he stared at the empty space a little more.
"You love me, don't you?" He asked the empty space.
Then, a little louder, he asked, "At least, you loved me, didn't you? Didn't you, Ginny?"
And he settled with whispering to the space. "Or was it good-bye forever because I confessed one to many times, was that it?"
It was one thing to say he held on to a glass ball. It was another thing, entirely, to say that the glass ball led him on, made him see a future that did not exist.
With a hardened face and a resolution, Tom walked out of the astronomy tower nine days before his graduation. After all, evolution never failed, while philosophy did naught.
Virginia Weasley, the seventh child and only daughter of the Weasley family, the girl who had a crush on the Boy Who Lived, the one named after the one and only Weasley to be in a house other than Gryffindor, and the one girl who Tom might have actually liked. Of course, when Molly named her daughter, she didn't quite know who Tom was, other than that handsome, mysterious Slytherin.