Author's Note: Many thanks to Emily, Banfennid and Mahoney, who beta'ed this for me. *hugs*
Dark Directed: Part Two
~*~
Ginny stood a few paces away from Colin and Zoë, leaning against the wall and staring up at the ceiling of the corridor. The sixth year Gryffindors were milling around in the hall, chattering in small groups as they waited for the third year Hufflepuffs to vacate the DADA classroom. Most of the students were taking the opportunity to gossip and flirt, and the hall rang loudly enough with their voices that Professor Sinistra, down the hall, had poked her head out of her own classroom twice to tell them off. Ginny was constantly surprised at how easily her housemates forgot there was a war on. Adrienne and Shelley were gossiping about some Ravenclaw boy, and the boys weren't much better, chattering on about Quidditch. It was easy to see why some people must think the students terribly frivolous; Ginny certainly couldn't see any evidence of worry in her peers.
Of course, her classmates would think she was foolish for worrying at all, but with Harry Potter dragging her brother into all sorts of scrapes, a prime target for He Who Must Not Be Named, it was hard not to. Mum and Dad were involved in preparations too, and Dad had spent most of his summer working outrageous overtime at the Ministry. Mum managed to be home most of the time, but Ginny had seen the strain on her face last summer, could sense it in the letters Mum wrote, and knew events were taking a toll.
"Hey, Ginny!"
Ginny jolted out of her reverie as Colin jostled her elbow. "What?"
"You coming to class, or what?" Colin pointed toward the door of the classroom with a flourish, where Zoë was waiting, looking back to see what was keeping them.
"Oh, right." Ginny picked her bag up off the floor and followed Colin in.
"You all right?" Zoë asked as Ginny passed. "You seem a little distracted today."
"No more than usual," Ginny replied. She and Zoë usually sat together, and Ginny followed the other girl to the bench they shared. They sat and Ginny was saved more questions by Professor Delacour's call for their attention.
Class went by as quickly as it always did for Ginny, and Professor Delacour let them go after lessons with a reminder that their essays on the care and habits of Tebos were due the following week. With heartfelt grumbling the students began to file out into the hall. Colin caught up with Ginny and Zoë, his friend Sanjeet trailing behind him. "I can't believe we have another essay due. It seems like essays are all we have nowadays. Like the teachers have decided to keep us out of trouble by making us write until our hands fall off!"
"That's not true," Zoë said. "We have a practical exam on blocking curses in DADA in two weeks, or had you forgotten?"
Colin's theatrical groan seemed to indicate he had. "I'm shite at curse blocking! Gin, you'll help me, right? C'mon, say you will!"
"Sure, Colin. If Professor Delacour says it's all right, we can use the classroom on Saturday."
"You are a lifesaver," Colin said fervently. "San, you want to come too? Gin, you don't mind, do you?"
"Of course not," Ginny said. She smiled at San, who was one of the few Gryffindor students who was even quieter than she was. He returned her grin, white teeth flashing in his dusky face. "And you too, Zoë, if you want to," she added
"Great! Say, girls, San and I were going to start a pickup game of Quidditch tonight. You up for it?"
Ginny shook her head. "We should probably study," she said, as Zoë echoed her head-shake. "That essay is going to be brutal."
"As though you have anything to worry about, Ginny," Colin laughed. "You always get top marks. What's your special project on this year?"
Ginny felt her cheeks heat. "Um, Unforgivable curses, actually."
Colin and San laughed, but Zoë looked impressed. "And Professor Delacour is letting you? I didn't think she'd allow you to do a project on them," she said.
"It's just theory," Ginny said quickly. "It's not like I'm allowed to go wandering 'round casting them on people."
"Well, that's good," Colin replied. "Say, maybe you could ask Harry about it. He's the only one I can think of who can throw off Imperious. Maybe he can tell you how he does it."
"He's not the only one, Ron can too," Ginny corrected. "And Hermione. And I wouldn't ask any of them for help. They've got schoolwork of their own, and other things to worry about. I can't ask them to do mine."
They had rounded the corner and were about to head down it, towards the stairs down to the entrance hall, when Zoë stopped dead. "Don't look now, but there's Malfoy down the corridor," she whispered. "Just lying in wait to take points, I'll wager. Should we go back and take the other stairs, do you think?"
Ginny looked toward the end of the corridor and a chill went through her. Malfoy was standing there, still as a statue, watching them - her - with icy eyes. "Yes," she said, almost afraid to take her eyes off him. "Let's go the other way."
She turned away, and a tingling awareness of Malfoy's eyes on her back made her shift her shoulders uncomfortably as she followed San, Colin and Zoë back the way they'd come. That was the second time this week he'd done this. Ginny didn't understand why he couldn't just leave her alone, instead of lurking around in corners watching her. It was clearly Ginny who was the focus of his attention this year, too - Malfoy barely bothered at all with Ron or Harry anymore, ignoring them with a cool disdain that drove Ron to distraction. Ginny had hoped so fervently that the git had forgotten about their encounter last year, but apparently Malfoy wasn't giving up on this easily.
Ginny and her friends made it down to the Great Hall without incident, but she couldn't forget the way Malfoy had been waiting specifically for her. He must have known that they would be walking down that corridor after DADA. It was the shortest route from the DADA classroom to the Great Hall, everyone knew it, which meant that Malfoy might very well have been waiting for her. Hoping to catch her alone, maybe? Ginny shivered at the thought.
Colin and Zoë provided a welcome distraction from Ginny's brooding, pestering her with questions about their essay and joking about the mountain of work their teachers were threatening to bury them all under. Ginny managed to put the incident out of her mind until after bedtime. But alone in the dark, with nothing to distract her, it came back to haunt her. She lay in bed, staring up at her curtains, mulling it over. Why was Malfoy following her? What could he possibly want?
And thinking about Malfoy inevitably led to thinking about Tom. Tom was the reason Malfoy was so interested, the reason he was following her, watching her. Tom and his seductive ways, his dark eyes and ability to twist anything of hers hopelessly out of true. Ginny sighed and gave up on sleep entirely. She could go down to the common room and read, she supposed, or just lie here and stare at her curtains, imagining horrible faces in their shadows until she worked herself into a state, or she could take her parchment and books and sneak out to the DADA classroom to work on her essay. The last seemed like the best option, time-consuming, interesting and blessedly private so long as she steered clear of Filch. Not that Filch would be able to catch her - the old man couldn't catch any Weasley worth their salt.
Her activity decided upon, Ginny crept out of bed and pulled a jumper on over her pyjamas, stuffing her feet into her shoes and snagging her cloak off the hook beside her bed. Her roommates slept on, oblivious, as she scooped up her bag and crept soundlessly out the door.
The DADA classroom was the haven it always was, and Ginny set her bag down with a satisfied thud. She cast a warming spell on her bench and pulled out the first of her books on Unforgivable curses, wrapping her cloak around her tightly against the chill. She worked steadily for an hour or two, note-taking and occasionally marking places in her text that were particularly interesting so that she could find them later. Ginny was so deep in her work that the sound of the door opening behind her made her jump, gasping.
She whirled around, and found herself face to face with Draco Malfoy.
~*~
Draco surveyed Ginny, his eyes narrowing. Ever since his encounter with Trelawney he'd been waiting to get the littlest Weasley alone and here she was, out after hours, sitting in her pyjamas on a bench in the DADA classroom. How convenient.
"Well, well," he drawled, sauntering further into the room. "Fancy meeting you here, Weasley. Why aren't you in your bed like the rest of the good little Gryffindors?"
To her credit, she didn't back down. Instead, she tossed her hair out of her face and glared at him. "I hardly think it's any of your business, Malfoy. I'm not doing anything wrong."
"No? Out of your common room after hours, hiding in an empty classroom when you should be in bed, both of which are in flagrant violation of schoo lrules? This is your idea of doing nothing wrong?" Draco moved closer and stopped at the end of the bench she was sitting on, fingering the prefect's badge pinned to his robe. Unlike Ginny, he was wearing proper clothes, not slouching about in his bed-wear. "That's a fair handful of points right there, Weasley. In case you didn't know."
"So take them and be done with it," she said with a defiant toss of her hair. She gathered up the papers she'd been writing on and stuffed her quill into the pocket of her pyjama trousers. "Since I'm sure you're dying to." Draco didn't reply immediately, and Ginny took the opportunity to slip out the other side of the row and back warily toward the door.
"Actually," he said, and she stopped, her eyebrows lifting in surprise. "There's something I've been wanting to ask you."
"What?"
"I've a question for you," Draco repeated. "Answer it for me and I won't take points."
Ginny pushed a lock of fiery hair behind one ear and shrugged warily. "Fine. Ask away, then."
"Tom Riddle," Draco began, and stopped as Ginny went from pale to dead white at the name. She backed up a step and clutched the book she was holding to her chest, her face the same mask of desperation and terror it had been the day she'd seen the boggart. Draco moved forward, alarmed. It'd be a bloody waste of time if she ran off before he got a chance to ask. "I want to know who he is."
Her face went from white to red, and she backed away from him rapidly. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You do, Weasley, and we both know it. Who was he?" Ginny had backed up to the wall at the end of the room and Draco followed, crowding her into the wall and blocking her escape with one casually placed arm. This close, he could see the faint lines of strain around her mouth, the nervous terror in her eyes.
"I don't know anything about him!" she repeated frantically, trying to slide along the wall away from him. "And even if I did, you know already, so why don't you just leave me alone?"
"No, I don't know already!" Draco snarled, his frustration showing through. Ginny tried to push past him but he beat her to the door, slamming it shut and setting one shoulder against it. "Enlighten me."
Ginny looked mutinous enough to hex him. Draco was surprised; nothing he'd observed about her so far indicated that she had that much fire in her. Instead of trying, though, she backed a few paces down the aisle and glared at him. "How could you not know, Malfoy? It was your father who gave me the bloody diary!" she hissed, her face flushing a blotchy red. "If this is your idea of a joke, I'm not laughing!"
"Weasley, I have no idea what you're talking about. What diary?" He had to tighten his hands in his robes to stop from reaching out and shaking it out of her. "Why would my father give you anything?"
"Because he hates my father, and he wanted to get back at him, and using me was the best way he could think of!" Ginny spat. "You honestly expect me to believe that you have no idea what happened? That your horrible father didn't gloat about it with your whole horrible family, about how he gave poor Ginny Weasley a haunted diary to take her over and make her do things?"
"My father wouldn't - "
"He did! It was him, he slipped it into my cauldron when we met you at Flourish and Blotts that year, and it was haunted, and I wrote in it, and he wrote back, all year!" She gasped for air, shuddering, looking close to tears. "All year, I was writing in it, and it was Tom. He used me, used my words, made me do things -"
"It wrote - ? You wrote in a haunted diary?" Draco asked. "Are you stupid? You don't write to books if they can write back! Didn't your parents ever teach you anything?"
"I was eleven!" Ginny shouted, her voice breaking with emotion. She was really crying now, her hands pressed to her stomach, trying to stop the tears, or maybe just to hold herself together. "I was eleven, and I didn't know. I thought maybe my mum had got me a present as a surprise, something to keep me company. I thought he was my friend! I didn't know what he was, or who he was, like I didn't know what I was doing, or what he was doing to me!"
Well, that was just mad. "That's mad," Draco said, and shook his head in disbelief. Of course she'd have to be a lunatic as well as poor as a church-mouse and not very pretty, standing there agape with her face all blotchy and her nose running. It still didn't answer his question. "Even if you did happen into a haunted diary, and were foolish enough to write in it, what was so special about Tom Riddle anyway?"
Ginny calmed a bit, wiped at her cheeks with a shaking hand and stared at him incredulously. "You really don't know?"
Draco snarled in frustration. "If I knew I wouldn't be asking, would I? All I've found out is that Tom Riddle went to Hogwarts, and after he graduated he left the country and disappeared. That's the last anyone heard of him. Who is he and why's he so bloody important, that's what I want to know. Because he is important, I know that much. So tell me!"
Ginny held his gaze for a long moment - so long that Draco was beginning to think she might tell him to sod himself and then he really would kill himself out of sheer frustration - before she went to the desk and drew a piece of paper from her bag. Draco watched, arms crossed against his chest as she dipped an unsteady quill into her inkpot and wrote seven words on the paper. She held it out to him with trembling fingers, and the paper shook in the air; Draco walked forward and plucked it from her fingers to look at it while she sank onto the bench by her books.
Tom Marvolo Riddle.
I Am Lord Voldemort.
Draco nearly dropped the sheet. "He's the Dark Lord?"
Ginny nodded, and Draco sat down hard beside her on the bench.
"Your father slipped Tom Riddle's diary into my Transfiguration text at the start of my first year," Ginny said, her voice eerily calm. "He'd imbued the book with his spirit long ago, a sort of copy of himself, and when I wrote in it, it transferred my life force to him. He could - could take me over, use me to do things, to hurt people. He had me let the basilisk loose, nearly killed half a dozen people...nearly killed me. Harry stopped him."
Draco transferred his shocked gaze to her. "That was you. In second year. You opened the Chamber of Secrets," he said in astonishment. "All the petrifications, all the messages...that was you?"
Ginny nodded, her face a picture of misery within the curtain of her bright hair.
Draco didn't know what to say. "Father told me it was the Heir of Slytherin."
"It was," Ginny whispered. "Tom was."
Draco digested this for a moment. "But that can't be right," he said finally. "Because I've been researching your Tom Riddle for a year now, and he was a mudblood. He can't be You-Know-Who or the Heir of Slytherin. He was a Muggle."
Ginny laughed shortly. "He was only half-Muggle. His father abandoned his mother the minute he found out his wife was a witch. Tom was left in an orphanage, stuck there with non-magic people who didn't understand him. Why do you think he hates them so much?"
Draco was thankful he was sitting down for this conversation; he felt as though he'd been standing on a magic carpet a hundred feet in the air, and someone had just yanked it out from under him. "But Father says he wants to lead the world back to rights - to the proper ways, not all influenced by mudbloods. How can You-Know-Who be for purebloods when he's not even pureblood himself?"
"Well, what's pureblooded anyway?" Ginny asked. "Filch is a pureblood, and he's a squib. Neville's pureblood too, and he's not all that great at wizardry - even my family has a squib or two, and the Weasleys have been wizards almost as long as your family. If it weren't for intermarrying with Muggles, wizards would have died out long ago."
Draco shook his head slowly. She was wrong of course, he knew she was wrong, but he was too distracted to refute her just now. Voldemort - no. He simply couldn't be a mudblood. There was no way. Father would never stand for it. "There's got to be another explanation."
Ginny made a frustrated noise and stood up, gathering up her books and her bag. She had calmed down considerably, though her face was still red and her eyes slightly swollen. "Well, that's the only explanation I can give you. If you think your father's lying to you, I guess you'll have to ask him about it." She turned on her heel and stalked to the door, letting herself into the corridor.
The door closed with a soft click that Draco barely registered. He sat in the empty classroom until it was nearly light, thinking over what she'd said. If what she'd said about Tom Riddle really was true...well, funny how getting an answer to his first question only led to more.
~*~
Ginny leaned back against the wall of the girls' bath, letting the chill of the stone wall seep through her robes and ease her aching shoulders. It helped to cool the heat of her embarrassment too - if she had to pick a list of things she'd rather not do, the little fit she'd had at Draco Malfoy tonight would certainly be high up on the list. Ginny closed her eyes and groaned softly as she thought about the way she'd lost control. So humiliating. And Draco had been there to watch it all, watch her cry and rage and yell like some pathetic little girl. She could just imagine what he'd say tomorrow. She'd given him enough fodder for weeks of taunting.
Draco didn't believe her, that much was obvious. Oh, he might believe her story about Tom and the diary, but Ginny could tell he didn't really believe that Tom and Voldemort were the same person. Whatever lies Lucius Malfoy had told his son about the Dark Lord, they were well learned. For all she knew, he'd met Voldemort before.
The thought of Voldemort made Ginny go cold. She had no idea if the diary was still active, if there was a way for Voldemort to access the words and memories of his ghostly teenage self. She hoped not - Professor Dumbledore said that Tom was gone, that Harry had destroyed him by destroying the diary but what had happened to it afterward, she didn't know. She wouldn't have put it past Harry to do something really stupid with it, like give it back to Lucius Malfoy. Who knew what sort of magic might be lingering in its pages? What if Dumbledore were wrong about the thing being destroyed? If anyone had bothered to ask her, she would have said to burn it and scatter the ashes, obliterate it utterly so that all that was left would be her own fading memory of Tom.
Ginny braced her back against the wall, dropped to the cool tile and lowered her head to her knees. It really was too much to expect, to hope that Draco wouldn't say anything about their meeting tonight. And then there would be questions from Ron, from her parents, from Madam Pomfrey and maybe even Dumbledore. What was she doing out of the dormitory so late at night? Why did she have trouble sleeping? Why had she never told anyone about the nightmares? Was she ill? Was she feeling strange? It made Ginny's head spin just to think about it. And all because Draco had done her a good turn in bad grace, and didn't know when to leave well enough alone.
Ginny heaved herself to her feet and went back to the common room. It didn't do any good to brood about things she couldn't fix now. She'd spend the rest of the night on a couch - she did that often enough that it wouldn't look odd to anyone, and maybe she'd even get some sleep tonight.
Several hours later, Ginny woke to a hand shaking her shoulder and Zoë's earnest face looking into hers. "Ginny, are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," Ginny said. She sat up and yawned, looking around the common room. It was empty, the fire out. Zoë had a towel draped over one arm and her toiletries bag with her.
"Are you sure? You look tired. When did you come downstairs?" The girl's small face was a mask of concern.
"It's nothing, Zoë. I'm fine," Ginny said. "Just couldn't sleep, so I came down here to study and fell asleep on the couch." Which was mostly a lie, but it hardly mattered - Zoë seemed to accept it. Ginny summoned up a false, bright smile for her friend and gathered up her bag. "If you're going to the bath, I'll go get my things and come with you."
"Of course. I'll be right here." Zoë smiled back, and sat on the arm of the couch.
"I won't be a moment." Ginny dashed up the stairs to exchange her book bag for her toiletries bag, grateful that Zoë wasn't going to push about finding her on the couch.
Ginny pushed her encounter with Draco out of her mind while she and Zoë got ready for the day and went down to breakfast. Ginny entered the Great Hall with trepidation, but to her surprise, Draco didn't tease her about their late-night encounter. He didn't at lunch, either, nor at any other meal that week. In fact, he barely noticed her - or Harry, or Ron, or anyone else at all. Draco seemed to have retreated inward, paying little attention to his House mates and classmates in favour of doing what looked like some furious thinking. Ginny supposed that must be a good thing, and even better if it meant he had forgotten about her.
~*~
Draco slumped against a table in the back of the library surrounded by old books, heedless of his posture. He had sent Crabbe and Goyle off, and Pansy was mercifully avoiding him today, so there was no one to see his shameful lack of elegance. He didn't have the energy to worry about appearances right now, not after what he'd spent his afternoon looking for - and finding.
Everything he looked at pointed to the same thing; Tom Riddle and Lord Voldemort were the same person. The timelines corresponded, and one book even had a sketch of what the Dark Lord had looked like the first time he'd risen, which looked a lot like an older Riddle might. The little Weasel had been telling the truth. Her Tom was Voldemort. It all fit.
Draco still couldn't believe that it was true. He couldn't reconcile what he knew of Tom Riddle with what he knew about Voldemort, and his father's beliefs. How could Father follow the Dark Lord if he knew that the Dark Lord wasn't even an embodiment of the ideals he held? It didn't make any sense. If Voldemort was a mudblood, that changed everything. If purity of blood was so important to Father - and it was, Draco had sat through too many lectures on that selfsame purity to think otherwise - then why would Father trust someone who wasn't a pureblood to cleanse the wizarding world of its dirty taint? That was the thing that was eluding him now, the answer to that 'why'. Because if Voldemort was a mudblood, then Father was wrong. And if Father was wrong about this, then what else was he wrong about?
What Draco needed, what he really needed, was someone who would be able to tell him the truth. Someone who wasn't Weasley, and wasn't Father, wasn't some dusty old book full of inferences. Someone who had a working knowledge of the Dark Lord and who might know a little of the school's history too.
Put that way, the person to ask was obvious.
Making an appointment with Snape didn't even draw suspicion; Draco spent half his time working at extra Potions assignments anyway, and arranging to meet his Head of House was a matter of course for a Slytherin Prefect. Draco waved Crabbe and Goyle away and foisted Pansy off on Blaise - Merlin knew if Blaise really was interested in the girl then he was welcome to her - and made his way down to Snape's office, his list of carefully prepared questions tucked into the pocket of his robes.
Snape was grading papers by candlelight, patiently marking down parchment after parchment and muttering imprecations under his breath about the stupidity of children. Draco's mouth lifted in a faint smirk, though it didn't last long. He'd often wondered why Snape bothered teaching, when he was a highly intelligent pure-blooded Slytherin who could be doing just about anything else. Draco wondered suddenly if Snape were something else he'd been blind to. Snape had been a Death Eater, Father had said so, yet he chose to live under Dumbledore's thumb doing something he clearly hated. Why?
Draco was starting to get very tired of that word.
"Mr. Malfoy. May I help you, or are you going to stand in the doorway all night and let in a draft?"
"Sorry, sir." Draco stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. Snape waved him into the chair in front of his desk, and Draco sank into it gratefully. Thank Merlin Snape wasn't Father, and he wouldn't be made to stand for this interview - that always made Draco uncomfortable.
Snape hadn't stopped marking, nor did he lift his eyes when he spoke. "What can I help you with?"
Draco considered how to approach his subject, then decided there was nothing for it but to jump right in. "Is You-Know-Who really half-Muggle?"
Snape froze, his hand tightening on the quill he held. After a lengthy moment he lifted his head to fix Draco with coal-black eyes. "What?" His voice was deceptively soft.
"I've been doing some...independent research," Draco said cautiously. "And I think that You-Know-Who was a Muggle - or part Muggle, anyway. I wanted to know if it was true."
Snape didn't move. He simply looked at Draco, his face blank. Draco remembered something Father had said about Snape - that the man had the heart of a snake, cold and difficult to find. Finally Snape shook his head and raised his quill again, turning his attention to the papers he was marking. "I can't tell you that."
"Why not?"
"Because it's not for me to say."
"Why not?" Draco began, then stopped himself. That sounded far too much like a whine. Judging by the disgusted look Snape shot him, the Potions professor thought so too. He tried again. "Why can't you tell me? "
"I've already told you why. It's not for me to say," Snape repeated. "Ask your father."
Infuriated, Draco pushed himself forward in his chair. "If not you, then who else?" he demanded. "I have asked father, and he won't tell me. If you won't tell me, how am I supposed to find anything out?"
Snape raised an eyebrow curiously. "I suppose it would depend on what you're looking for."
"How about answers?" Draco spat. "You were a Death Eater the last time You-Know-Who was in power. Was he a Muggle or not?"
Snape shook his head patiently. "It is not for me to instruct you on the subject of Lord Voldemort or his followers. You will have to ask your father."
"What makes you think I haven't tried?" Draco stood up and started to pace in a small, frustrated circle. "Father just says it's none of my business and he'll tell me 'when I'm ready'! Dammit, I'm not a child!"
"Then perhaps you shouldn't act like one, Mr. Malfoy," Snape said. "If you have nothing more to say, I believe this audience is over."
Draco snarled and took himself out, slamming Snape's office door as loudly as possible on his way. Snape seemed to want to play secrets, and that was just fine. It wasn't as though Draco was out of resources. If Ginny Weasley was the only one around who would give him answers instead of put-offs, then he'd just go and ask her.
~*~
Ron, Harry and Hermione were at it again, whispering down at the far end of the Gryffindor table, their heads bent tight together as they talked urgently amongst themselves. Ginny watched them enviously. She often wondered what it must be like to have that sort of friendship; the sort where you were a seamless part of a whole instead of three separate people. Ginny didn't have that with Colin and Zoë, or with anyone else. Not since Tom.
It always came back to Tom, and Ginny was beginning to suspect it always would. Being at Hogwarts was a constant reminder of her first horrible year here, wondering if she were going mad, if she were imagining things, trying to talk to Tom about it and having him tell her that she mustn't tell anyone what was going on. They'd think she was crazy, her brothers would never understand, no one could understand her like he did. And it was true. He had been so earnest, so solicitous when she had poured her troubles out to him, so understanding and kind. He'd been like no other friend she'd ever had, always asking after her, wanting to know her thoughts and worries, never impatient with her or rushing off to talk to someone more interesting.
Even after she knew that his concern for her was false, no one had ever treated her quite like Tom. He had always acted as though her opinions mattered, really listened to her as she spilled all her childish worries onto his pages. As false as he was, Tom had been her first real friend, and after her first solitary year at Hogwarts Ginny found she had difficulty making new ones. Colin and Zoë were all right, but they were closer to each other than they were to Ginny, and she could see that their friendship was going to develop into something more eventually. She'd be left out even more than she already was.
Ginny watched as Ron, Harry and Hermione stood up as one and made their way out of the Great Hall, heads still bent together. She imagined they were talking about something really important - she doubted Hermione was all that concerned with which boy was cuter or whether the new colours at Gladrags would suit her, which was all Adrienne and Shelley ever talked about. Ginny would bet that when Hermione talked to Ron and Harry, it was about things that really mattered, things that would have an effect on the world, that would result in people being protected and bad things happening to the other side.
Ginny, obviously, wasn't included in any of those sorts of discussions. She knew that they all saw her as a child still, too young to be worrying about things as serious as battle plans and deployments, never mind that she was better at DADA than Ron and she'd gotten better marks than anyone in her year. If Ginny offered up a suggestion she would undoubtedly get the sort of response that Dad might give: "You're too young, and classroom learning is no substitute for real experience."
Except the reason Ginny had no real experience was because after her first year at Hogwarts her family insisted on treating her like she was made of glass. Mum bought all of her books, and Dad double-checked all of her things for charms before they let her have them. She wasn't allowed to do anything alone when she was at home, and none of her friends at Hogwarts had half the sense of adventure that Ron did. They never seemed to want to do anything even remotely adventurous. Ginny was always the odd one out. She wanted to have friends who would be there for her the way that Harry and Hermione were there for Ron, and he for them. Colin and Zoë were good friends to her, but it wasn't the same. She wanted friends who would listen to and understand her, who wouldn't judge her or want to change her, friends with whom she could talk about anything.
She wanted Tom.
Despite everything she knew about him - knew about him, more intimately than anyone else could ever hope to - despite his cruelty and ultimate indifference and his final, cold abandonment, despite the fact that he terrified her with what she knew he could do, she wanted him. She wanted what she'd thought he was, what he had been, even if he had only been that way to get what he wanted.
Sometimes it felt like she didn't even exist here anymore, in this world with her classmates and friends and family. As though her only real purpose or goal in the world was to have been a conduit for Tom, to be whatever he had wanted to shape her into. She had loved him and hated him, wanted him in ways she had only half-understood at eleven, with a fierce, sharp desire that scared her when she thought about it.
And then Malfoy had come along with his smirks and his questions and his bewilderment at the answers that weren't what he'd expected, leaving Ginny with no one to talk to about things that no one ever wanted to talk about.
Except Tom.
Ginny had never kept another diary, not because she'd been forbidden from it but because she hadn't wanted to. What was the point of writing things down if no one wrote back? Tom's diary had been special, because when she wrote out her problems and worries he had always been there with friendly words, to offer advice or console her when she needed it. A regular diary wouldn't be like that - wouldn't be a friend, not really. And real friends, friends to whom she could pour out all her thoughts and feelings...well, Ginny didn't have any. Perhaps it was blasphemous but watching Ron and Harry and Hermione leaving the Great Hall as one, Ginny wanted with all her heart to be able to talk to Tom.
And there was a way she could, wasn't there? Ginny knew, deep down, that she was still more afraid of Tom than anything else, just as she knew that Professor Delacour had acquired a new boggart for her third years, and that it was being kept in the wardrobe of the DADA classroom. She could talk to Tom if she wanted to. It wouldn't quite be the same, of course, seeing him in the flesh rather than writing to him, but it would be close enough.
It took Ginny weeks to make up her mind, weeks of internal debate and fierce arguments with herself about the wisdom of doing what she was thinking of doing. She hadn't even really made up her mind, but she still ended up in front of the wardrobe in the DADA classroom, one night, staring at the wooden doors. Ginny stood there for a long, long time, debating with herself. She didn't know if she wanted to do this, didn't know if she wanted to face him without someone else to pull her out if she failed again.
But when had she ever had a safety net?
Ginny reached out one hand, and rested it on the wardrobe latch.
~*~
"What are you doing?"
Ginny spun around with a sharp gasp, her hands leaping to her chest. She closed her eyes in obvious relief when she spotted him. "Malfoy. You scared the life out of me!"
Draco frowned at her as she slumped against the wardrobe. "What are you doing, Weasley?"
Her eyes flew open, and she stiffened warily. "Nothing," she said, too quickly. "I was just doing some research for a DADA project."
The girl really was a terrible liar. "Weasley, you're a terrible liar. What were you really doing?"
She was stubborn even if she wasn't good at lying. "It was nothing. I wasn't doing anything wrong."
"So you were doing something." Draco smirked at the frustrated expression on her face. "You know, Weasley, this habit of sneaking out at night is going to get you in serious trouble sooner or later. If you tell me why you're here, you can postpone the inevitable that much longer."
Ginny pressed her lips together in irritation and glared at him. "I'm not telling you anything, Malfoy. It's none of your business." She turned away from him to tidy the stack of books on the desk beside her, her movements jerky and uneven.
Draco watched, one eyebrow raised. He very deliberately kicked the door shut and leaned against it. "You're not leaving here until you tell me."
Ginny leaned heavily against the desk, then suddenly picked up the top-most book and spun around to hurl it at him, her face twisted with anger. Draco ducked, and the heavy book thunked into the wood beside his shoulder. "I said it was nothing!" she yelled, then slumped to the bench, shoulders sagging.
Draco waited a moment, watching her curved back cautiously, but she didn't seem ready to launch any more attacks on him with unsuspecting books. He made sure the door was firmly shut, then leaned down and picked up the book she'd thrown, smoothing the bent spine carefully. Ginny didn't move, not even when he put the book down on the desk beside her and sat down on the edge of the bench.
It took a moment to realize that she was crying, tears leaking steadily from beneath her closed eyelids. Draco hovered nervously at her side, at a loss. He wasn't equipped to cope with tears, for God's sake. "Look, Weasley, I - "
"I was looking for him, alright?" Ginny spat bitterly, her breath hitching. "Are you happy now? I was looking for Tom." Her voice cracked on the name, and she leaned one elbow on the desk in front of her and rested her forehead on her hand, her face obscured by a bright curtain of red hair. Her other arm was wrapped around her waist, as though trying to hold in the emotions that were shaking her apart.
Draco swallowed. He wanted to touch her, he realized suddenly, to comfort her, to wipe away the silent tears he knew were tracing her cheeks, wanted it so badly his palms ached. It was an utterly foreign feeling - when had he started being affected by some weepy girl's crying fits? But this wasn't Pansy, sobbing over a broken nail or ruined shoe, this was real grief, and he wanted to help her. But he couldn't, could he? It wasn't done - Malfoys did not comfort crying girls out of the goodness of their hearts. He was fairly sure that Malfoys weren't even supposed to have hearts. Certainly Father didn't.
But Father had been proven wrong once already, hadn't he?
Pride is a lonely country, Mr. Malfoy.
Damn that old bat anyway. He reached out slowly, and feeling as though he were launching himself off a precipice, he rested it on Ginny's shoulder. She sighed and seemed to sag a bit against her hand. Draco let his hand slide down her back gently, rubbing in slow circles. But instead of being soothed, his touch on her shoulder seemed to break something inside of her, and Ginny started to cry in earnest, in harsh, rasping sobs that shook her whole body.
It took a moment for Draco to realize that she was speaking, muttering words and disjointed phrases in between those terrible sobs. "Wrong, wrong, it's wrong, I know it's wrong, but I wanted to - just once, he was mine. Mine, and I loved him, and it's not fair -"
Draco patted her back helplessly. "Shhhh," he murmured, unused to this business of giving comfort and fervently hoping she'd stop crying soon. "It's all right."
"It's not," Ginny said, her voice muffled and hoarse. "It's not all right." She took one deep breath, and another, then raised her head, face blotchy from weeping, and slid slightly away from him on the bench. Draco scowled and stood up abruptly, cursing himself inwardly for wishing that she hadn't moved.
Silence stretched out between them, broken by the odd sniffle from Ginny. She wiped at her cheeks with the edge of her sleeve, and Draco wordlessly produced a handkerchief for her, accepting her murmured thank you with a curt nod. "What's this all about, then?" he demanded finally, waving one hand at the empty classroom.
Ginny shook her head and looked away. "I just wanted to - I don't know. I wanted to see him again. He was - " She broke off and shut her eyes tightly. "Haven't you ever felt like - like no one cares? Like you have no one to talk to, no one who'll listen? Tom - he always listened. I mean, later he didn't care, he didn't, and I know that, but in the beginning he did. And I wanted that." She wiped at her face with the handkerchief again and met his eyes. "I don't expect you to understand. I don't understand it, I don't see why anyone else would."
Draco leaned casually against the desk across the aisle. "You're right, I don't understand. I thought you said he was using you to petrify people."
Ginny nodded. "He was. He was...but long before that, he was my friend."
Draco raised his eyebrows. Friends with Voldemort. That was a new one. "So you were looking for...what? Another boggart?"
She flushed red, but nodded again, dropping her head to stare at her hands. "I wanted to see him again."
Draco nodded silently, because she seemed to not want a reply to that. The silence stretched out before Ginny broke it again by clearing her throat rustily.
"It's just that - I loved him. I would have done anything -"
"Don't be ridiculous," Draco interjected scornfully. "You're a Gryffindor, aren't you? With all the stupid bravery nonsense they drill into you in that house." He spared a disgusted snort to show what he thought of Gryffindors. "You seem to be willful enough. You'd have probably told him to go sod himself."
Ginny shook her head miserably. "But I didn't. I didn't. After everything that happened, and all the people that got hurt, and I couldn't tell him no. They say that no one can really make you do anything you don't want to do, not deep down. So all of the...all of it, at some level, I must have - have wanted - " she bit off the sentence and ducked her head again.
"What, you mean somewhere deep inside you is a rabid chicken murderer?" Draco snorted. "I'm deathly afraid, get away from me, you foul woman." He stopped and wrinkled his nose. "And that was a truly awful pun."
Ginny let out a choked giggle and shook her head again. "That's not what I meant," she said. "Maybe he wouldn't have had to take me over. I would have just - " she faltered, "just done it. Because he asked."
"Oh, so if I said, go launch yourself off the Astronomy Tower, you'd do it?"
"No," she said scornfully. "Don't be silly."
"Bet you would for Potter."
That earned him a deadly glare. "I wouldn't!" Then she stopped, and looked down at her clenched hands. "Not anymore, anyway."
Draco sighed in disgust. "Weasley, that's pathetic."
"I know."
And damned if that tiny, hopeless voice didn't get to him like nothing else. "Well, you did say you wouldn't anymore," he said, hinting encouragement, half-disgusted with himself for bothering.
"He wouldn't ask," Ginny murmured.
Draco hissed through his teeth. "Why do you care? He's not that special, he's funny looking, he's got bad hair, he's next to blind in more ways than one and he's certainly not worth jumping off towers for. And anyway," he continued as Ginny lifted her head, "do you really want the kind of boy who'd actually ask you to throw yourself off a cliff for him? I'm sure it's the sort of ridiculous romantic nonsense girls love, but the fact is, you sacrifice yourself for him and he'll run off with the next tart who shows a bit of leg faster than you can say 'closed casket funeral'!"
Ginny stared at him in shocked silence, then burst into peals of laughter. Draco flopped down beside her on the bench and waited until her laughter trailed off into sputtering giggles. She'd gone pink in the cheeks, and her eyes were sparkling with merriment as she glanced at him. She looked...not beautiful, no, but pretty. Prettier than when she was crying, anyway.
"It's true, you know," he said. "Potter's not worth that sort of devotion."
Ginny sobered. "If not Harry, then who else?"
"No one!" he said harshly. "No one is worth giving yourself up like that! Hell, Weasley, you should know that better than anyone. Or did you like killing chickens for Tom?"
That scored a direct hit; Ginny flinched as though she'd been struck. But she didn't give up, not that he'd expected her to. "And what about you?"
Draco narrowed his eyes. "What does this have to do with me?"
"All these bold words about not letting anyone push you around. Does it mean you're not going to go off and join the Death Eaters as soon as school ends?" The laughter was all gone from her face now, and she held his eyes steadily.
"That's not the same," he said instantly. "It's totally different."
"Is it?" Her eyes were steady on him, and it was Draco who looked away first.
"It is different," he insisted. How had this conversation gotten so turned around? "My father wouldn't let anyone boss him around - "
"Except Voldemort," Ginny put in calmly. "Don't you know what the Dark Mark is? It's a way for Voldemort to contact his Death Eaters, all the time, wherever they are. He sears it into your skin and then you're never, ever free of him. He could burn people up if they disobeyed him, just by using the Mark, that's what the books say." Ginny tilted her head consideringly. "But you don't have to believe me...you can always ask Snape."
He didn't want to look at her, didn't want to acknowledge that she was right, damn her. Because he knew the Mark hurt - he'd seen Father wince and rub at it before, seen Snape clutch at his own forearm in pain when the Potions master thought no one was watching. But Draco couldn't imagine his father submitting to that if it did what Ginny said - not Lucius Malfoy. He wouldn't allow anyone the power of life or death over himself, wouldn't give that sort of power to someone else.
"Your father must gain something from it," Ginny said, as though reading his mind. "Power and immortality - those were the two things Tom wanted most, and what his followers want most too. So ask yourself, what will you do if your father gets what he wants? Unlimited power, living forever? You're his heir, but if he never dies, what happens to you? Do you want to spend the rest of your life as a hanger-on?"
"You've put an awful lot of thought into this, haven't you?" Draco sneered, glaring at her. "Spent a lot of time thinking about the Dark Lord's motives?"
"He lived in my head for a year," Ginny replied hollowly. "So yes, I know how he thinks. Not because I feel the same, but...I do know."
Draco stared at her, unsure how to respond to that. Maybe Ginny did know, better than he did, anyway. She looked so...hurt somehow, with those enormous brown eyes downcast in her too-thin face, her pale cheeks scattered with freckles like cinnamon on cream. The spark that shone through her and lit up her features when she laughed was gone, and she seemed somehow diminished, plain and pale and fragile. Draco reached out without thinking to rest one hand on her narrow shoulder. The desire to give her comfort somehow was overwhelming - to take away that sadness and make her smile again.
Ginny lifted those deep eyes to focus on him, sad and startled at the same time, with an expression in them that Draco felt sure no one had ever seen but him. Don't do this, he thought, even as he leaned forward. This is a bad idea. His lips brushed hers gently, and it was a bad idea, because once he'd felt her soft, soft mouth against his, he had to feel it again, and then again. And then her lips parted against his, and she made a soft hungry noise in her throat as he opened his own mouth and traced the inside of her lips with his tongue, and he was lost.