(Authors Notes: Well, here we are at Chapter 2! Thanks for sticking with me this long! In this chapter, we see things more for Voldemort's perspective as he tries to convince his stolen daughter to stay with him, by any means necessary!)
Chapter 2:
When he felt his blood calling to him, he apparated immediately to where he felt it. And when he saw the girl run out of the house, he knew he'd finally found his daughter. He quickly charmed a stick into a portkey and threw it in front of her. She stumbled over it and vanished. He disapparated back to his home.
She was just picking herself up when he reappeared and sat himself down in his favorite chair. He watched her try to reactivate the portkey and then saw the flash of anger as she could not. He smiled. She looked at him and spoke. He delighted in hearing her voice, hot with anger, so like the boy he'd strove so hard to hide at her age. She had recovered somewhat from her shock at him calling her by her proper name. She reached for her wand. "You can't make me into something I'm not," she said, leveling the wand at him.
"Neither can they, Miranda. Who are these people who have stolen my child and raised her as their own?" He looked at her squarely, trying to use his powers as an occlumens to gain mastery over her.
"I'm not your Miranda." She said, "I'm Ginny Weasley. See!" she pulled her hair around to show him, "Weasley red hair!"
He strode purposefully towards her. She flinched, but did not move. "You don't scare me," she said, so softly she might well have been speaking to herself.
"I don't want to scare you."Voldemort laughed, and twirled the offered hair around his finger, "Not a red strand in sight." He let her hair go. "I know the Weasleys, of course." Now look at me, so I can see what they've done to you, my only daughter, the mainstay of my old age."
Ginny found herself turning her face up to him, studying him as he studied her. She looked for the young handsome man in the diary, seeing him only slightly in this tall gaunt skeleton. "But you're so old."
Voldemort said, "Too old to be your father, you think?" When she nodded, he continued building on the confusion he saw in her eyes, elaborating on the kind of story she would like to hear, "Your mother was younger than me, obviously. She was one of the enlightened people who trusted me to create a better world for wizards. A lovely young woman named Cassandra Goyle. She is in St. Mungo's now. Losing you was too much for her." He did not to tell her that she'd been in St. Mungo's since shortly after their daughter was conceived. He revealed too much of his soul too Cassandra during their passionate encounters. Since then, he'd been more guarded. Cassandra's ill-timed loss of sanity had forced him to move quicker than he'd intended to against the Potters. He couldn't risk delay, knowing what she could tell them, and he'd left Cassandra's care in the hands of her family who'd consigned her quietly to a private room from which she had yet to emerge. He felt her weaken, "I went to James Potter that night to ask him where you were. I left Cassandra with her parents and went to find you. You were so young. Not even a month. Who could blame me for being angry? He refused to tell me anything of you and then, I was weak and wounded. I fled and dreamed of being restored to life, to find you but I couldn't feel you anywhere, until today. He stroked her hair. "My beautiful Miranda. And I have missed your youth. Our time together stolen, but we're together now. And you are now, as always, the brightest star in my universe."
Ginny frowned, "But what about my...Cassandra? Are you going to leave her there? How can I know any of this is true?"
"I intend to rescue her," Voldemort lied, "But it takes planning to launch an assault on St. Mungo's.
"But I know all you care about is power! Everybody says so!" Ginny insisted.
"Everybody is wrong." Voldemort said soberly, "All I care about is seeing my family happy. Everything I've done is to create a better world for people like us. The small-minded can't understand that, but you, you must know better in your heart." He paused a moment and then went on, "But I understand you are concerned about the people who raised you. I shall write to them and let them know you're with me. If you would care to write a letter, I'll send it along with mine."
"But..." she asked, and he saw that she was thinking of going back to them.
"Stay with me, Miranda. Get to know me. I'm your father. I love you. Let me be your father. Don't give up on me yet." He summoned a desk over to stand between them. "Here are parchments and quills. Write to them now. That will set your mind at rest at least long enough for us to have dinner together. Then you can decide."
Ginny sat down and began writing.
Voldemort wrote too.
Weasley Family
The Burrow
I have reclaimed what is mine.
