"Is everything all right?"
Ginny had just opened the door and felt her muscles tense at hearing the concern in Draco's voice. "Yes," she stuttered. "What do you mean? Why would anything be wrong?"
Draco furrowed his eyebrows. "I didn't ask if anything was wrong. I asked if everything was all right." He warily stepped into her room.
"Well, thank you for your concern, but everything's fine," Ginny closed the door gently. "You just surprised me, is all."
Draco cocked an eyebrow at this and when Ginny turned to face him, whipped out a large bouquet of gorgeous red roses from behind his back.
"Draco, those must've cost a fortune!" Ginny exclaimed.
"I didn't buy them," Draco said coolly. "One cannot buy his way into a woman's heart." He found an empty spot on the floor and uttered a spell under his breath. "He must find his own space, and let his love for her grow from there." As if on cue, roses began to grow from the wooden floor of Ginny's bedroom.
When Draco looked at Ginny, her face held an expression of absolute delight. "Draco, that was so amazing! Where did you learn to do that?" She squealed.
"Some things are better left unsaid—" Draco stopped short. "What was that?"
"What was what?" Ginny said a bit too quickly, eyeing her desk drawer.
Draco caught her glance at it. "Is that a boggart or something?"
"Yes! It's a boggart!" Ginny exclaimed. "It's been there for ages, so let's just leave it alone," she laughed nervously.
Draco stared, predaceous. "A little weird for a boggart to be in your school desk. But I can get rid of it for you. Rumbling from the desk must keep you up all night." He walked toward the desk.
"No!" Ginny shouted.
Draco whirled around with the most confused look across his countenance. "Ginny, it's a boggart, not a big deal. And if you're afraid it's going to scare you, well, I'm the one facing it, so it's okay. Watch, it'll be gone in a second."
Ginny mouthed wordlessly. "Wait! Your present! I got you a present!" She ran to her bedside table to get the box resting atop it.
"Gin, you're acting really weird."
As Ginny turned, she saw Draco reach toward the drawer handle. "Draco, no! Don't open it!"
But it was too late.
As soon as Draco had slid the drawer open, a large source of bright light poured out of it toward the ceiling, and an invisible force knocked him backwards into the side of Ginny's bed, sliding both the bed and bedside table out of place and toppling over the pictures resting on the table.
"Draco!" Ginny cried.
"I'm fine," he replied stoically, helping himself up and massaging his right leg unnoticeably. "Apparently, there's a little more than a boggart in your desk."
"Yeah, that," Ginny trailed off.
"You mean you know what it is?" Draco asked while pushing Ginny's bed and table back into place. But before Ginny could explain, the little black book that was Tom Riddle's diary floated out of the desk drawer. Draco crossed his arms. "This is definitely better than any date I could plan." He walked over to the diary and was about to pluck it out of the air. "Isn't this—?"
"Yeah, Tom Riddle's diary," Ginny said, looking at the ground. "Remember how you kind of had to rescue me a month or so ago? That was Tom Riddle's fault, too. I mean, I know you dueled with him and all, but he's the one who started the whole thing, long before you were involved. Since my first year at Hogwarts, he's kind of been following me around," Ginny sighed. "I thought Harry had gotten rid of him that time in the Chamber of Secrets—I mean, I know he's a ghost and all, but with You-Know-Who involved, I guess it's not too simple to fully kill him. He still appears in my dreams all the time, and then he showed up again about a month ago and considering he reappeared, and Harry's still busy battling his present form and all, I guess it was silly of me to think he'd really died when you 'killed' him."
Draco didn't know what to say, but he saw tears well up in her eyes. "Ginny—"
"No, Draco," she said firmly. Her bottom lip began to quiver, so she bit it. "You're a wonderful person, Draco. I was so blessed to find someone like you and—"
"Ginny, what are you saying? Stop this! What's wrong?" Draco asked, knowing what was coming.
She let out a long breath. "I can't continue seeing you, Draco." She began pushing him toward the door. "I'm so sorry."
"Stop!" Draco hollered, firmly clutching Ginny's shoulders. "What is the matter? Tell me!" He demanded.
Ginny silently cried and sniffled in Draco's grasp. "Draco, you're hurting me," she whispered.
He quickly let go of her shoulders; he hadn't realized just how hard he had been gripping her. First he stuffed his hands in his pockets, then he took them out and crossed his arms over his chest, but he couldn't stay still. Finally he said, "Ginny, I thought you loved me!"
Ginny winced at the hurt in his voice. He was waiting for an answer. She sighed, opened the door, and tried to push him out again, but he wouldn't budge.
"You said you loved me!" He cried aloud. "Was that all fake? Explain that!" He demanded.
Ginny wasn't fighting the tears anymore and she couldn't bring herself to look into Draco's eyes.
"What's wrong?" Draco whimpered. "Don't you love me?" It was all he could think to say.
She sensed how hurt he was. So confused and angry, too. Ginny lowered her eyes and took something out of her pocket. "Expelliarmus!" She said through her tears. Ginny caught Draco's wand as it flew toward her and watched as he was thrown through the open door and into the banister in front of her door. She walked to the entrance and dropped Draco's wand on his chest.
He stared at her, bewildered.
"I do," Ginny whispered. And with that, she closed the door and locked it.
"Harry, wait!"
Harry could hear Ron running after him, but he refused to stop. Everyone had always used the pity card on him, and now his friends, the only people he used to have to turn to, were turning into everyone else.
"Harry!"
He continued running through the corridors, but suddenly couldn't move his legs. Harry groaned and tried with all his might to budge his legs.
"Harry!" Ron called again, finally catching up to Harry, out of breath.
Ron wasn't carrying a wand, but as soon as he could move his legs again, Harry turned to see Hermione silently approach from behind him, pocketing her wand away. She looked scared, or maybe shocked.
"Harry, mate, just let me explain."
"There really isn't anything to explain, Ron," Harry said crossly.
"Yes, there is," Ron replied. "Why else would you be running away?"
Harry gawked as if this were the stupidest hypothetical question ever, so he answered, "I don't know, Ron. Maybe because I felt like taking a nice jog through the hallways. Why do you think I was running?"
"That's why we have to talk," Ron said sternly.
"Great, you talked, I talked—are we finished here? I have other things to do." Harry glanced slightly at Hermione before looking away. She hadn't said anything yet.
No one said anything for a few seconds longer, so Harry gruffly turned, preparing to leave.
"Harry, wait."
He turned to see Hermione take a step toward him. Harry sighed. "What?"
Hermione looked at the floor then looked him in the eye. "I'm sorry for lying to you."
"Well, what's done is done, isn't it?" Harry said stoically.
Ron could see the hurt in both his friends' faces, but at this he had to step in. "Hermione, you have no reason to look so guilty." He put a hand on her shoulder. "Harry, we did nothing wrong. If you would just let us explain!"
Harry was flabbergasted and he mouthed wordlessly. "Explain? Fine! Go ahead and explain! Explain to me why you two had to lie to me. Explain why you couldn't tell me of this one detail in your lives when, in fact, you know every detail of mine."
"Maybe because you'd react like this?" Ron said a bit nastily.
"Who wouldn't?" Harry yelled back. He heard the portrait beside him grumble and walk out of the picture, perhaps into a quieter setting. "I tell you two everything. I thought you were my best friends. I have no family, no real relatives, and apparently, no friends. I trusted you two!" He said, clenching his fists.
"Harry, even though you might not think it, you're somewhat a celebrity in the wizarding world. If anyone, you should know about the need for privacy, and my personal life is my business. Privacy." Ron said, his cheeks turning red from frustration.
"So much so that you had to lie to me about your whereabouts—?" Harry asked. He was about to say something else, but he suddenly stood stock-still.
"Harry, what's wrong?" Hermione asked, concerned.
His scar was hurting—it was burning, but he used every muscle in his body to hold his hand back from rubbing it. "I think you know what's wrong," Harry said in a low, raspy voice through his efforts to hide that anything was physically wrong with him.
Ron was about to say something when Harry couldn't take the pain any longer and fell back against the wall, letting out a slight yell of anguish. Both his hands clutched his scar and his head felt as though it might explode.
"Harry!" Ron cried, forgetting for a moment their previous argument.
Seeing him come near, Harry clenched his teeth, regained his balance and pushed himself off the wall. He whipped his wand out and pointed it at Ron, backing away. "You stay away from me," he growled, backing farther away, almost stumbling over himself.
Hermione walked toward him. "Harry, you need to lie down and see—"
"Stay away!" Harry tried to yell, short of breath. He was now pointing the wand at Hermione and both his friends could tell he was having a hard time standing up. Nice timing, Voldemort, Harry thought to himself. And then everything went black.
Draco was still sprawled against the banister in front of Ginny's room minutes after she had shut the door on him. He had never felt so awful in his life. Ginny's pushing him away like that, so abruptly, was worse than any punch to the stomach. Draco felt as if a part of him, inside, had been removed… and it hurt beyond reason.
He replayed the events from moments ago in his head, but no matter how he looked at it, he knew Tom Riddle's diary was behind it all. Even if Potter's hero complex had rubbed off on her, Ginny had still pushed Draco away.
What hurt most was he didn't know he could love anyone or anything as much as he loved Ginny. He hadn't ever been in love before, but even so, what he felt for Ginny he'd felt for nothing else in his entire life. With his father molding him to be some future Death Eater and his mother hardly ever near him, Draco never had the chance to know what real love was like, but with Ginny, everything was different. And without her, words could not express how different everything was.
Draco finally sat up and looked through the slits in the banister, down into the Gryffindor common room. No one was downstairs—not even the terrific trio, which was good, in a way, but he still needed to see to Ginny. He got back on his feet and jiggled the doorknob to find it locked.
"Ginny!" He yelled, banging on the door with his fists. "Ginny, I'm not leaving before we sort this out! Gin—!"
Draco suddenly heard a shrill scream from inside Ginny's room.
Ginny turned back to her room after locking Draco out, only to see Tom Riddle's diary floating before her. "Why can't you leave me alone?" She furiously whispered through her sudden flood of tears. She grabbed the worn diary and threw it as hard as she could toward the farthest corner of her room.
At the moment, she hated herself deeply for hurting Draco as she had. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Draco lying against the banister outside, his face holding an expression of utter confusion.
Ginny went to her bedside table and put the fallen photos back up. The pictures of her family and Harry, Ron, and Hermione smiled and waved at her normally, but when she looked at Draco's school picture, the tears rolled down her face even faster and his picture put his head down.
Just when she was about to put the picture back on the table, Ginny spotted something on her bed that startled her so much she dropped the frame with Draco's picture in it. She heard the glass break into tiny pieces, but did not have time to care, for on her bed was Tom Riddle's diary. She looked back to the corner, but the diary wasn't there anymore—it was right in front of her, on her bed. Ginny could feel her heart beating fast and picked up the diary. She opened it to an empty page and felt the familiar vibrating of the diary in her fingertips.
"You're never alone," the message read.
Alarmed, Ginny let go of the diary, but it did not drop to the floor; it simply floated in the air where she had been holding it. The diary turned so the empty pages faced Ginny and this time it wrote, "You belong to me."
"No, I don't!" She shouted at it. She ran to her desk and finally found an inked quill, but then—
"Ginny!" It was Draco, and he was pounding on the door.
She looked at the diary again and it simply underlined the words it had written before. Angry, she took her quill and spoke, as she wrote, "No, I don't."
"Ginny, I'm not leaving before we sort this out! Gin—!"
Ginny heard Draco yelling, but the moment her quill had left the damp pages of the diary, the page she'd written on became pitch black with ink, and before she'd hardly emitted any kind of scream, she had been sucked into the darkness.
Draco whipped out his wand. "Alohomora!" He cursed inwardly for not having done it before, rashly bursting into the room. "Ginny!" He cried.
As soon as he had a chance to gather his bearings, he realized no one was in the room. He looked around and everything seemed normal until he saw the smashed glass next to Ginny's bed and Tom Riddle's diary lying next to it. He carefully picked through the glass and winced at seeing it was his picture that had suffered such an unruly fate and decided not to reparo the mess. Draco then picked up the diary and turned to the first page. "Your soul is mine," he read.
Draco's eyes widened and he gasped as he remembered how Ginny had spoken so fearfully about Tom Riddle. "No," he whispered, even though it couldn't help the situation. Then he saw the quill lying on Ginny's bed, and with one last look at the tiny picture of Ginny in the newspaper clipping of she and her family in Egypt, Draco replied back to Tom Riddle's diary.
"Professor Dumbledore is going to be here once he finishes with some business about the misplacement of some nifflers, so until he is back, I ask that you two go back to your common room," Madam Pomfrey said. "Mr. Potter has been here enough times to know his way out of here once he is feeling better, so go on!" She said, pushing Ron and Hermione out the doors of the infirmary. "Out!" And as soon as they were out, she closed the door.
"Pushy, isn't she?" Ron said, trying to lighten up the mood, but Hermione still looked glum.
"Ron, I can't help but think Harry's in trouble again—in fact, he's in trouble all the time, and all we were worried about was, well, you know," she said, blushing slightly.
They began walking down the corridors of the old castle, back to Gryffindor Tower.
"Hermione, witches and wizards date each other everyday. It's nothing new, and it's not like we were doing anything bad. We were just kissing, you know—? Apricot pudding," he said as the portrait of the Fat Lady swung open, admitting them into Gryffindor Tower. Ron then gave Hermione a kiss on the cheek and hugged her. "Look, Ginny's door's open. Let's go pay her a visit or something." He looked at her beautiful face. "Maybe it'll make you smile." He hated to see such sadness in her eyes.
Hermione returned the look and forced a tiny smile on her lips.
They walked up the stairs and Ron called out to his sister just before they reached the door, but when she didn't answer, they walked into the open room. No one was inside.
"I wonder where she is," Ron thought aloud. "Why would she just leave her door open with all the lights on?"
"Look," Hermione said, kneeling next to Ginny's bed. "It's Tom Riddle's diary."
"What?" Ron exclaimed. He immediately ran to her side. Hermione had picked up the diary and Ron could tell by the look in her eyes that she had read something in the little black book. "What does it say?"
Hermione looked up at Ron, clearly worried. "Well, Tom Riddle wrote, 'Your soul is mine,' and someone else also replied."
"I know, Ginny—"
"No," Hermione said. "It… it looks like Draco's handwriting."
"Malfoy? How could he have written in it? How could you know it's his handwriting?"
"I grade papers for Professor McGonagall, Ron, and this looks like his writing," Hermione replied.
"Well, what does it say?" Ron asked, hoping the answer would not mean bad news.
Hermione read Draco's fancy scrawl in the diary in response to Riddle's statement. "Please, take mine instead."
Author's Note: So much suspense! So basically, Draco and Ginny were transported to the same place, seeing as Draco offered his soul to Tom Riddle in place of Ginny's. What Tom Riddle thinks of the idea is yet to be seen. And finally, I've decided to pick a ship other than Draco/Ginny and make it happen, so hello to Ron/Hermione! Sorry about all the drama surrounding it, but I've often wondered how Harry might intake the news if this ever happened in the HP series, and anger or frustration are usually the scenarios that make the most sense in my head. Anyway, hope the fic is still somewhat interesting and that I've got you hooked. And if you really are hooked, I'll apologize now and say the publication of the next chapter will be delayed since school has started again and I've got a lot of work piled up already, and sadly, school comes before Harry Potter! But don't worry, I'll be working on the next chapter slowly but surely.
Questions: Someone asked in my reviews if Draco was still a vampire from Do I Not Bleed? and the answer to that: No. If you'll remember in the last chapter or so of DINB, because Draco bit Riddle, Draco's vampire-ness is no longer existent, though Riddle's, again, is yet to be seen. One more question I am often asked is: Why do you keep bringing Riddle back? Honestly, I've no idea. He's the coolest bad guy in my book… or diary (laugh with me here)! He's so screwed up, yet I imagine him so evil and, I dunno, I just like his bad guy-ness! I also like all the plots that can be outlined just around his diary and stuff. And why have I turned him into a vampire? Because I've got a vampire fetish, so sue me. ;)
Chapter Four: Harry will finally wake up and have a chat with Dumbledore, and the trio will have another little chat, too. And of course, we find out where Draco and Ginny have gone. Stick around!
Thanks to otterhead, bigreader, Jonah, Sasha, Jixnce, Rinote, Twerksie Gogara Relffin, Andromeda77, Chantelle, and Rebell for reviewing the last chapter! Reviews from you guys are so sweet… so keep 'em coming! :)