Looking back on those days, you have to give me some credit. I wasn't stupid at eleven.
– Go on. No, seriously. You're looking very awkward all of a sudden. Don't know whether to laugh or to feel ashamed on my behalf? Go ahead and laugh, or go ahead and feel ashamed. It's got to be better than standing there uncomfortable like that.
I know how ridiculous it sounds when I defend myself, when I defend my eleven-year-old mistakes, when I say I wasn't stupid. I'm not claiming to have not made mistakes, I'm not claiming that I wasn't naïve, or foolish even. I would use the term "silly." And yes, I know I'm trivializing too much, look what could have happened, people could have died, someone died before, on and on and around and around until I could have ended the world with my little diary and my quill pen. It was dangerous, and it, the action, was stupid, whatever "actions" it involved. But I didn't end the world and no permanent harm was done, and frankly I'd rather not talk about that.
– Well, sure, I'm being easy on myself. Would you rather I blamed myself for calamities that never happened? – I've done it before, you know. I was dumb. Just forget about it. No, don't leave. I'll still talk, if you still want to hear. Where was I?...
Looking back on those days, you have to give me some credit. I wasn't stupid at eleven. I was devoted to Tom Riddle. I had come to know him so well – which means that I felt he knew me so well – that I considered him my closest friend, even though we'd never met face to face. But my doubts about him were accurate, and I knew, for the last month or so of school, that he was something sinister. I wasn't sure exactly what he was – but something dangerous.
The possessions I don't recall, because my mind formed no memories of them at the time. I first knew there was something wrong with me when, partway through the autumn, I began losing my bearings – and my memories. Waking up in odd corners of the castle I hadn't even known existed, waking up with strange bits of paint, dust, feathers, down the front of my robes – I didn't know what to think of it, except for the general and unhelpful comment that this was really bad. I guess for the first few weeks or so, it was almost funny. It was my secret problem.
– yes, of course I knew that was silly. I knew this was a major problem. But haven't you ever wished for a special disaster that affects only you? Your own secret problem that you must wrangle with, and about which you can't speak to anyone? It even became shameful in a few weeks – same thing. I didn't even tell Tom the first few times I woke up, dazed, as if from a long nap, beneath a flight of dungeon stairs, perhaps, and perhaps with my robes frayed.
It was my tragic mental illness. Then it was my tragic and shameful mental illness. Finally when it became my tragic and frightening mental illness I told Tom about it. For help. For sorting out what was happening to my mind. He talked to me, comforted me, told me I was probably fine. Told me as long as I never woke up with a can of turpentine, or muttering a firestarting spell, he'd still talk to me. Otherwise he'd be too afraid. I laughed and assured him this had never happened.
It didn't cross my mind at all, at first, to suspect that Tom was remotely involved. A mental block, but surely an understandable one. Later, after I became suspicious, I stopped writing for long periods of time. When I came back to the diary, after days of absence, Tom was always so kind. So understanding. Asking me to write more often, but not pushing. Coming out with ever more insightful comments on my behavior, my moods, on my personality in general. Making me feel so good about myself, so blessed to have such a friend. Surely Tom Riddle could not be doing this to me, taking my sanity and erasing my memory.
Surely! Well, come on – he was my best friend at the time.
Once, I threw the diary away. I flushed it down a toilet – didn't work – but I threw Tom Riddle out of my life. It was a horrible thing to do, as I look back, a horrible thing to throw my friend away where he would be rotted with the sewage and would most likely never be found – written to – ever again. Then again, I knew by that point that he was sinister.
The central paradox to those last days with the diary – I knew he was sinister, yet I wrote to him more and more. An orgy of diary-keeping, the equivalent of all-night conversations with your friend, curled up in the dark, not willing to go to sleep just yet. And he was so kind. And everything he said was so true. And he was so real, I could almost imagine him in front of me. Until one day he actually appeared in front of me. The boy, sinister, friendly, perceptive, and dangerous, all in one.
It was actually quite exciting.
"Tell me, Ginny," says Tom. Rushing wind over my eardrums, a burning in my chest; Tom's eyes are magnets, but repelling magnets.
He tilts my chin up further, so that I must look into his eyes. His dark eyes, they're repelling my gaze and attracting it at the same time, like the forbidden words he pulls me to. Attract, repel. Warm, cold.
"Say it, Ginny," he says, and if I am not crazy then he is pleading and scolding at once, at the same time pulling my sympathies, my feel-better-Tom thoughts toward him and repelling my sensitive underbelly that he chafes against so often. Magnets, rushing wind, acid to the heart. Maybe this is what conscious rebellion feels like.
"I am," I say.
Stop. Nothing. The calm is unbelievable.
He hesitates a few seconds, considering me, pulling me in with his eyes that are now only attracting. I look into them, gauging them. Warm, but cold – I'm not sure at the time what that means. The facts don't really register, if they're supposed to register anything at all.
Tom's eyes take on the shade of decision. He asks, "You are what, Ginny?"
And I have just begun breathing calmly, just lost the flush, just stopped tasting bitterness in the back of my mouth. So swiftly, his eyes become repelling magnets again, so swiftly I really can't believe that it's happening, or how swiftly I can change mindsets – he is playing with me, now.
"I said it, Tom."
"You're apologetic. Don't be apologetic. You know you didn't say what I wanted."
"I said…"
"No, Ginny. What you said was 'I am.' What you said was nothing contained in something. What you said is what most people call bullshit." He strokes the underside of my chin again, so tender even while he is so demanding. I can almost imagine myself as a cat being petted.
"I only want the truth," says Tom.
Rushing wind, acid in my heart, burning in my chest, opening my mouth and trying to speak but it is impossible, the words are like a magnet repelling my brain and I cannot speak. I can only look at Tom and silently beg for understanding. He knows me.
"I know you, Ginny," says Tom, dark eyes warm and cold at once, "and that's why I'm not letting you go. You have to say it, Ginny. Because until you say it out loud your brain's not going to allow the thought to come out." Tom says this and his words cut like a pair of fangs through the rushing wind; through the burning and the lightness and the coldness they strike at my heart. Because I know that they are true.
And the magnetic repulsion, my brain shying away from the words – no I can't but yes I must – my eyes try to fasten on the thought and they find only dark wells of cold and heat. My mind tries to fasten on the words but they are like a phantom I am unable to grasp.
"Tell me the truth, Gin." Final encouragement from Tom.
"I am better," I say. The cold retreats and the heat comes, rushing in waves, and then the cold rushes in rivulets down my fingers and toes. "Tom – I am better than them."
"Are you really?" he asks, and I blink. The world is coming back to me now, in patterns of dust and stone, and it seems this was all for nought if Tom rejects what I have discovered.
"Are you really better than everyone, Gin?" asks Tom, not sneeringly, but genuinely concerned, truth-seeking.
"No," I admit, and the heat comes back. I shift my gaze down to the cloudy region near my feet, then with a new rush of strength up into Tom's ever-black eyes. "But I can be."
"Ah," says Tom, as if the thought is newly dawning on him.
"No," I say, "But I will be."
"Well then," says Tom, and abruptly releases my chin. I blink, and the world comes rushing back, and yet I am not sure where I am. "I'll accept that, Ginny. You've the right spirit, and a good soul."
I flush with pleasure, but feel the childishness of the reaction. "I don't need you to flatter me, Tom," I say.
He laughs, genuinely in delight. It is something he would have said. Or something he would have said had he been me, in my position, being flattered by another Ginny. But beyond that he seems to forget what we were saying.
"Come with me," he says now, offering me his hands, both his hands, so cool and white and offered right to mine.
"Where?" I ask, somewhat wary but blushing – yes, blushing now – when my eyes meet his.
"Come with me." Such a friendly gesture, such a wonderful smile, those hands held warmly out to me.
"Where?" I ask. He never answers.
"Come with me."
– Well, obviously I went with him; the story's gotten rather famous by this point, hasn't it?