Ginny walked down a deserted stone corridor, looking for an exit. Thefloor was cold, so cold that it made her skin draw tight and pebble with goosebumps, and she somehow knew that she was entirely alone. She just needed to reach the end of this hallway, and she would be able to leave…
Ginny broke into a run, her feet slapping the floor. As she ran, she half-watched the speeding walls around her, and saw suits of armorchange intostone, elongate, morphing into statues of a sharp old wizard.
Ginny kept running, although now it seemed as if she was simply moving on ice; she was going nowhere, running in place. From out of the distance, a figure sped towards her, not walking, but not floating, either. It was cloaked in robes of deepest black, that much she knew before it hit her.
She suddenly stopped running, looking around her in a sudden grip of terror.
She was in the Chamber.
"Hello, dear Ginevra," a smooth voice said from under the cloak. Ginny choked with the need to swallow; a deep, pulsing fear started in her chest and snaked throughout her body like a twisted black vine. "It has been a long time."
Ginny tried to scream, to deny his claim, but her throat simply would not obey.
"I told you I would come back," Tom hissed softly, stepping forwards. The redhead tried desperately to move back, to run, but her feet were rooted to the spot, held as if by the same ugly black vine of fear that kept her from speaking. "We had some unfinished business, did we not, my dear Ginevra?"
Tom lowered his hood, revealing gleaming red eyes and a face as pale as death. "I trust you did not forget?" He moved closer, drawing forth an obsidian knife, and Ginny had a fleeting image of him stabbing her through the heart. He moved against her, drawing the flat of the icy blade across her cheek and followed it with his fingers. "You shall be my dark queen, Ginevra."
As he moved the knife from her face to her body, Ginny struggled violently against her frozen hold, eyes wild in terror. What was he doing?
She instinctively recoiled as he brushed the bare skin of her arm, but the only visible sign of her repulsion was the barest twitching of her skin. She could not move.
"You are mine, Ginevra," Tom whispered, lightly running the edge along her arm. "You are mine." He artfully dug the tip into her skin, deep enough to make her bleed. Ginny felt a searing iciness as he carved into her skin, the cut burning with pain and cold. He brushed his frozen lips over her neck, and his free hand traced the contours of her nightgown.
Screaming inside her head, Ginny wracked her brain frantically for something, anything. Anything to get him out of her mind and off her body.
A faint memory of something she had overheard brushed across her conscious thought― 'Close your mind Potter, you'll never keep the Dark Lord out without closing your mind!'
"Come, my sweet Ginevra," Tom whispered, placing his hand on the small of her back and licking blood off her arm. "Don't just sit there like a block of ice." He laughed maniacally, the echo ringing off the walls, and Ginny felt herself move towards him like a marionette. Horrorstruck, she tried to close her mind.
I want him to get out, she thought forcefully. Out! Ginny searched her subconscious, looking for anything that was not a part of her. Everything was as it should be, except for an ugly black darkness.
Tom.
Feeling her arms wrap around his waist of their own accord, she frantically began to saw away at the edges of the fibrous dark mass.
"What are you doing?" Tom spat. Suddenly the blackness grew, pulsing against her willpower.
Out! She thought vehemently, rending him off her mind's subconscious. Get out of my head, out of my mind―
"Cease this immediately!" Tom snarled, but even as he went to reattach himself, she heard the sound of her own scream, strangely detached from her body, and then, she was falling.
"Ginny! Ginny, wake up!" a voice cried tearfully. Ginny screamed again, and only when she was sure she was actually awake did she open her eyes."Ginny!" Her roommates were huddled fearfully around her, along with Hermione, who looked as if she had been ready to cry. "Ginny, are you alright?"
"I― I―" her voice broke. "What happened?"
One of Ginny's roommates, Vanessa Malone, shuddered, the color only just returning to her trembling features. "You were screaming something awful, Gin. Scared the bloody hell out of all of us." The other girls nodded wanly, looking a bit frightened.
Ginny shuddered, feeling chilly despite the heat of the castle. Noticing Hermione watching her fearfully, she gave a flickering smile. "I'm fine now. It was probably just a nightmare." If only that was all it had been.
She rubbed her arms, and suddenly jolted as her hand slipped across something.
"Ginny―?" Hermione said tentatively, before crying out. "Ginny, oh my god, you're bleeding!"
Ginny looked at her fingers, and saw that they were indeed covered in her own blood.
A thud somewhere near her signaled that Vanessa had fainted, but her foggy mind only acknowledged this with a dim sense of sympathy. She looked down at her hands, vaguely intrigued with the slick crimson liquid, and barely registered Hermione's distant cries of alarm as a white fog crept over her vision and she blanked into unconsciousness.
She was lying on a bed; that much she knew. Cracking open one eye, Ginny squinted against the painfully bright light of the hospital wing and quickly shut it again. She was in the hospital wing? But why― suddenly, everything came flooding back to her in great big tidal waves that threatened drowning.
"Gin? Are you up?" Ginny grudgingly opened her eyes again, to see Ron sitting next to her bed. Hermione and Harry were standing off to one side, and Vanessa was in a bed next to her. Figured.
"Mmph," she groaned, rubbing her eyes blearily. A thick bandage was wrapped around her upper arm… the exact spot where Tom…
"How long?" she croaked.
"It's about noon," Hermione said, looking somewhat relieved to be able to do something for her. Ginny glanced at the clock; as she did, she noticed another figure standing in the infirmary. Draco leaned against the far wall, detached from the rest of the people around her bed, his face a smooth emotionless mask. The only thing that seemed human were his eyes; they watched her shrewdly, almost protectively. Wait, what?
She felt her head spinning. Since when had he been protective? About to open her mouth to say something, she closed it again. He was now looking at her with a bored kind of interest, as if she were a small child he was humoring. Had she imagined it?
"Ginny, it doesn't hurt or anything, does it?" Ron asked. She carefully avoided looking at Malfoy.
"Dunno," she said, examining the bandage. "Feels a bit numb." She glanced again at Malfoy, but he simply watched her.
"What happened, Ginny?" asked Hermione anxiously. "How did― how did it happen?"
Ginny fought the urge to smack her head repeatedly into the metal headboard for not thinking of an answer to this beforehand. She couldn't just up and out with, Oh yes, well, you see, Tom has this strange thing with blood, you see, so he carved his initials into my arm. She didn't think that would go down too well.
Thinking desperately for an excuse, the redhead muttered, "Must've cut myself on the bed or something."
Harry and Ron seemed to buy it at least, but Hermione still looked at her somewhat concernedly. She probably would have questioned Ginny further, had Madame Pomfrey not chosen that moment to bustle in and insist on an early departure.
"She needs quiet and bed rest!" the matron said reproachfully, pursing her lips. "Dumbledore's orders, now all of you, out!" She hustled the trio out the door, and only when the doors were shut again did she hurry over to Ginny.
"Here dear, drink this," Madame Pomfrey said, pouring out a questionable-smelling potion into a glass. "It's a blood-replentishing potion; those wounds simply refuse to heal." She shook her head as she handed Ginny the potion. "You'll just have to take a bit of this each night until we figure out how to seal the wound."
Ginny eyed the glass distastefully, and glanced at Madame Pomfrey's retreating back.
"And mind you drink that, dear, I'll know if you haven't." The nurse walked back into her office, shutting the door behind her.
Ginny grumbled, pinching her nose and taking the potion like a shot. Urgh. It was thick, just liquid enough to swallow, and had the disgusting taste of bad cabbage.
"Water?"
Ginny jumped and looked around wildly for the source of the voice. No one else was supposed to be in here!
Then her eyes fell upon the shadowed form of Draco Malfoy at the corner of her bed, a soft smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.
"How are you so bloody quiet all the time?" she said irritably. "That's the second time you've snuck up on me!"
Draco smirked. "It's one of my many talents. So tell me, how is it that you got your arm sliced open? And don't give me the load of shite you told Granger about knocking it on the bed, either. I could smell that lie from across the room."
Ginny scowled. "And what makes you think I'm going to tell you if I didn't tell Hermione?"
"Why won't you tell?"
Ginny glared silently at him. If he only knew…
"It's obvious someone cut you with obsidian, you know."
"Oh, is it?" she answered, trying to keep the amazement out of her voice. How the bloody hell had he known?
"Yes, actually. Only obsidian wounds can't be healed magically."
Oh, Ginny thought. Well that makes me feel stupid. "Well, maybe," she grumbled.
Waiting for a smug look to plaster itself on Draco's visage, Ginny instead found him studying her intently, as if she were a fascinating book.
"Something interest you?" Ginny said.
"Yes, actually." He smirked. "You."
"what's that supposed to mean?" she cried, but Draco was already walking towards the door.
"I suppose I can let you off your duties until you're out of the hospital wing," he called.
The door closed on his retreating form.
I am so sorry it took me so long to update. I've been really, really busy, what with training for field hockey and going to the shore every weekend. So, I want to give a big, hugeamaluge thank-you to all of my darling reviewers who've waited so patiently! nods I really can't believe how awsome you guys are! This one's for you.