Tom led Ginny by the hand into an empty classroom.
He pulled out a chair for her, dragged another chair over to face her, and sat down squarely.
She watched him steel himself, rebuilding those walls of impassivity. "Why am I your boggart?" he asked, tone carefully neutral.
"You're not," Ginny protested, "Not really."
"Yes, I am. Explain," he demanded, "Please," his voice broke on that plead.
What the hell was she supposed to say? That his future self had tried to kill her? That she wouldn't be born for another fifty years?
"Is this related to why your parents don't exist?" he asked, pressing.
She swallowed. She wasn't ready for this. She was barely ready to look him in the eye.
She took a breath. And told him the truth. "I've been to Hogwarts before. I got up to my fourth year. In my first year you… Someone who looked like you stole my mind and made me hurt people for him. He pretended to be my friend, and then he-" she stopped and screwed her eyes shut, trying to banish the memory. This was far too soon, she'd just re-lived it, couldn't he have waited a few hours for this conversation?
"He tried to kill you. Didn't he?" Tom asked, softly.
Ginny nodded. He was too clever for his own damn good.
She watched him clench and unclench his jaw. What was he thinking?
He was silent for a long time.
"How could you have been to Hogwarts before?" he asked.
"I don't really know," she said, then hesitated. She could tell him everything. She should. She was gonna sound insane.
"I fell through an archway," she continued, "and ended up here, fifty odd years before I would even be born, in a body that's definitely mine but a few years younger."
Tom was silent for a minute more. "When are you from?"
"It was nineteen ninety-four when I fell through the Veil."
"You're crazy," Tom said, but his eyes were alight with… something. Something nice. Something warm. "You're lucky I like you."
Ginny laughed at that, because she really, really was. No, that was selling him short. He was a lot of things, but he wasn't cruel. Not this time around. It's funny to think what can change, just from meeting someone you shouldn't have been able to.
"You're trying to get home," he said, "That's why you have those books, that's why you're hiding them from me. You're trying to leave but you don't know how the archway works."
"Yeah," she admitted.
"Why?" he asked, desperately, "Is it so bad here?" With me, he didn't say. Ginny heard it anyway.
She pitched forward, leaning on her knees. "I miss my family. I miss my mum. I've never been alone for so long before, and I know I have you so don't even start, but my family is big and noisy and even at the orphanage it seems so cold."
"Okay."
"Okay? What do you mean 'okay'?" She sat up, staring at him.
"Okay, I believe you. Okay, I'll help you get home."
She raised an eyebrow at him. "I wasn't asking for help."
"Well you're getting it anyway. And I'm coming with you."
"What?"
"Look, I hate it here too. I mean, I like Hogwarts well enough, but Hogwarts exists in your time too. You're going back, so I'll come with you. You got here without breaking anything."
Ginny hesitated. She wasn't at all sure how her actions affected the future, or if they did at all. But if anything was going to start adversely affecting how things play out, surely it would be dragging someone from the past forwards in time. Especially someone who would eventually be making magical artefacts with memories of himself inside them.
That was the thing, wasn't it? She had no way of knowing if getting here had actually screwed up the future, or created some kind of paradox. There was no way to find out but to return and see for herself.
"It wasn't someone who looked like me, was it?" Tom asked, rhetorically, "It was me. An older me. Someone I could have become if I hadn't met you."
Ginny didn't want to admit it out loud. Didn't want to tell him that he was fully capable of becoming a killer.
She didn't have to. She nodded anyway, he deserved an answer.
He looked straight through her, his pale blue eyes piercing straight to her soul. "I don't want to become that, Ginny. I don't want to become someone who scares you like that, who could hurt you like that. Don't leave me here to become it. Because I will."
"Tom, no, you're not-"
"I'm your boggart, Ginny."
She swallowed. It was hard to argue with that.
"Let me come with you. We can find your home together."
Ginny considered it. He was clever. If anyone could piece together how to control where the Veil sent you, it was him. Letting him help was a practical choice.
But also...
It sounded nice.
She wanted to believe that she could keep her friend and still go home to her family, that no one would be hurt, that nothing bad would happen. That she wouldn't break time by trying to have her cake and eat it too.
"Okay," she said, smiling a small, hopeful smile.
Tom was furious. She had lied about everything. Everything. All the way down to who she was and where she came from. Everything she had ever said was coated in lies. She had known him before she'd ever met him, and she'd never said a word!
How could she?
But none of that mattered right now. His fury wouldn't serve him right now.
Expressing his rage wouldn't stop Ginny from being scared of him. No matter what she lied about, he had still walked in on her curled in a ball, trying to hide her tears. She had still given him gifts when she didn't need to, still held his hand when he was hurting, still tried to defend him from the world even as he was the one at fault.
She still touched him and hugged him and…
He wasn't sure what he would do without her warmth anymore.
So his fury could simmer and wait. Later, when she wasn't hurting and afraid, he could yell his feelings at her, scream that he felt angry and hurt and betrayed. Later.
He smiled gently at her, and placed his hand over hers.
