Title: Mirror of a Thousand Shadows
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, Ginny/Bellatrix, background one-sided Tom/Ginny and Harry/Ginny
Content Notes: AU, roleswap, character deaths, possession, Horcruxes, gore, violence, madness, Slytherin Harry, dysfunctional family dynamics, obsession, minor character deaths
Wordcount: This part 5500
Rated: R
Summary: When the Dark Lady Firebrand came to Harry Potter's house to kill him, she didn't manage it. Harry survives, goes to Hogwarts, and befriends Ron Weasley despite being Sorted into Slytherin. Ron's younger brother Tom starts at Hogwarts the next year, burning with ambition to prove himself, and in possession of a mysterious diary from which a sixteen-year-old witch who calls herself Ginny speaks…
Author's Notes: This is one of my "Samhain to the Solstice" fics for this year, fics posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It should have four or five parts, and is told as a series of vignettes more than it is a proper story. It is a Tom and Ginny roleswap, although trying to retain as much of their essential personalities as possible.
Mirror of a Thousand Shadows
How did it begin?
It began with a girl with red hair, who thought her name was Ginny Wesley, entering the magical world and having people call her "Weasley" within moments of meeting her. It started with an instantaneous Gryffindor Sorting under the Hat, and the Hat murmuring a warning that she failed to heed, dazzled as she was by the world around her, the staring people, the floating candles, the ceiling that mimicked the night sky, everything.
It started, or it continued, with the girl finding her family and trying to discover why she had grown up in the Muggle world when she had living magical relatives. It sparked with the moment when the Weasleys at the school turned their eyes away from her, or coughed or told her that Muggleborns could have red hair and magic, too.
Ginny opened an old copy of the Daily Prophet in the library one afternoon and read a story about Octavian Weasley, sent away from Britain in exile for some unnamed social crime, and the rumors that had gone around about him having a Muggle mistress.
So. She was a half-blood. Ginny sat for a long time with her cheek cradled in her hand, staring at the photograph of the man she suspected was her father. He didn't hide his face from the camera. He stared defiantly, and then winked.
Ginny winked back.
She was proving the worth of her heritage by being in Gryffindor. She would prove it by being as brave as he had, too. Her father had risked the disapproval of the whole pureblood world. She didn't see how she could do less.
By the middle of her fifth year, Ginny had gained a reputation as the Gryffindor who never refused a dare, who was brave enough to sneak into Professor Slughorn's stores and remove the most valuable ingredients and outface him with a bright smile the next morning, who was the kind of Seeker who would perform a Wronski Feint and count her own death as ample reward.
One of the Slytherins in her year, Orion Black, challenged her to research and perform the Darkest art of all. It was obvious he thought no Gryffindor would put their souls or safety at risk in such a way. Ginny laughed at him, and found the right book in the Restricted Section. It had been no trouble to charm Professor Merrythought into signing a permission slip for her.
Ginny's nose wrinkled as she read through the process of creating a Horcrux. It was disgusting, truly. But she wouldn't back down from a dare. She wouldn't have her father say that he was ashamed of her.
She wouldn't have anyone from the Weasley family say that she wasn't a true Gryffindor.
She sneaked into the Muggle world, able to move through it much more easily than a typical pureblood would, and chose her victim, a man who was using his fists to beat up his girl. Said girl gaped all around when her victimizer vanished into thin air, but Ginny didn't stay to hear what her stammered questions might have been. She was already away, fleet on a broom with the Stunned and bound Muggle trussed in front of her, back to Hogwarts.
She did suffer a faint moment of doubt when she laid the Muggle down in front of her and glanced back and forth between him and the jeweled armband she had received from an admirer. Did she have the right to commit murder?
But she pushed away the doubts. A dare was a dare.
And really, who would miss this man? Ginny had made the right choice when she'd rescued the woman from him, and the thought of the girl's bleeding face decided her. If she let him go, he would probably go right back and beat up the girl, and even a Muggle woman deserved better than that.
Ginny lifted her wand and began to chant.
The moment of splitting her soul was like being drenched in volcanic light.
Ginny slowly opened her eyes. She was crouched on the floor of the abandoned classroom she'd chosen for the ritual, staring at the corpse of the Muggle man and the glimmering jeweled band. The opals and rubies seemed more alive against the silver than they ever had.
Of course, they held the soul of someone alive now, didn't they?
Ginny smiled as she picked up the band. She didn't care much for immortality, but with this, she had accomplished her purpose. She could show it to Orion Black tomorrow and laugh in his face. She had enough power and enough boldness to accomplish the Darkest of Arts.
And it hadn't been so bad after all, Ginny thought, as she tucked her Horcrux into her robe pocket and used an intense fire to consume the Muggle's body. Why had the book hedged the process around with warnings and claimed that it was rarely performed? If anyone else knew the change that it could make in you…
Ginny giggled softly to herself. Well, she didn't think she would tell them.
But someday, she might like to experience it again.
She did experience it again, twice more before she left Hogwarts.
She used her old diary, the one she had written naïve ramblings about being accepted by the Weasley family in, to accept the second shard of her soul. The victim was a useless Muggleborn girl in first year who constantly bragged that she was going to best Ginny's record for the most daring pranks. Who would miss her? Ginny was sure that the downcast eyes and shut mouths the morning after the girl's death concealed people who were just as relieved as she was that Ellie Granger's chattering little mouth had been shut.
And it wasn't as if anyone knew what she had died of. Ginny had used the Killing Curse, and that was indistinguishable from a heart attack.
Let Professor Dumbledore stare at her from the head table with silent disapproval. He had always disapproved of her, even though he was her Head of House and had been the one to come find her at the orphanage she lived in in the Muggle world. He had said that the pranks she played on the other children were cruel, that it was no wonder she didn't have any friends.
Ginny smiled at him, secure in the middle of the court she was even now beginning to gather around her. Let him pretend she didn't have any friends.
The diary Horcrux was securely tucked into a pocket, and the soft throbbing of it comforted Ginny. The transformation process had eaten all the childish notes she'd filled it with. It was, now and forever, the artifact of a girl who had trodden roads all others shied away from.
A conversation on the edge of her circle made Ginny turn around and listen. Myrtle Warren, who was a Ravenclaw but sat at the Gryffindor table ever since Ginny had accepted her for playing a terribly amusing prank on a fellow fourth-year, was telling an old tale she'd evidently read in a children's book, her eyes wide.
"…and it's because Godric Gryffindor was a Leonismouth! And even though some people think his bloodline has faded, that's how you can tell if someone is his descendant. The book said so."
"What's a Leonismouth?" Ginny interrupted, because she'd never heard the term before.
Myrtle promptly perked up and fluffed her hair with one hand, peering coyly at Ginny with big black eyes. Ginny smiled back. She wasn't personally interested in romance, but it was an amusing game, and except for Dumbledore, she'd never failed to make someone like her, girl or boy.
"It means someone who can speak to lions," Myrtle said, a little breathlessly. "Gryffindor's familiar was a lion—"
"That's only what some of the books say," interrupted Charlus Potter, an upper-year Gryffindor whom Ginny couldn't personally stand. "Not all of them. And they're silly children's books at that."
"I don't think they're silly," Ginny said calmly, and a few people leaned away from Potter on the bench. "Tell me more about it, Myrtle."
And the girl did, chattering so determinedly that Ginny could have learned several libraries' worth of information about Gryffindor, probably, if she'd had hours to listen. She didn't, as she had to go to Charms before Myrtle showed any signs of slowing down, but it was something interesting to think about as she sat before Professor Swift and absently performed spells she had known for years when he asked her, earning dozens of points.
Her mind was back on an incident in her childhood when the orphans, as a special treat, had been taken to visit a "zoo." It had been a poor, ill-minded place, with cages that contained scrawny, skinny, starving animals, and even then Ginny had walked about with a frown, knowing she deserved more than this.
She had come to a halt before a cage that held a miserable, panting cat. It took her reading the sign beside the cage to realize it was supposed to be a lion. Ginny had scoffed. This was a lion? It didn't even look as grand as the illustrations in the shabby, worn books she had read at the orphanage, which always showed a golden lion prowling about a green jungle.
The cat inside the cage raised its head and focused on her. Her head, Ginny supposed. It didn't have a mane, so it was a lioness. Unless its mane had fallen off because they couldn't be bothered to keep it up.
"Why are you standing and looking at me?" the lion had asked.
Ginny blinked and stared. She resisted the temptation to look over her shoulder and check if anyone else was hearing this, because, well, they already looked at her like she was mental.
And if it was real, then it was special and just for her. Not something the other children should be permitted to share.
"Because I haven't seen a lion before," Ginny answered. "But you're rather a poor specimen of lion, aren't you? Your coat looks like it's going to fall out any second." That was mange, Ginny supposed.
The lioness stretched slowly, and there was a liquid grace in her muscles, but only a little bit, Ginny thought. "They do not feed me well and do not let me roam," the lioness growled, her voice rising a little. "But come near, little two-legger, and check if my claws are still sharp."
"No, thanks," Ginny said, with a faint smile. "How can you talk?"
"All lions can talk." The lioness gave Ginny a look that made her bristle. She hated it when people thought she was stupid. "It's a rare human who can respond, though. What are you? How can you hear me? Speak to me?"
"I'm special," Ginny said. She hadn't known she was a witch then, but she had that conviction as deep as her bones, all the same. "No one else I know can do this. You ought to say thank you for being so fortunate as to meet me."
The lioness stared at her, and then gave a raspy sound that was probably as close as she could come to either a purr or a chuckle. "I knew a lion in the cage before this one who would have liked you," she said, and closed her eyes and curled up.
No matter what Ginny had said after that, she didn't manage to make the lioness move. And soon the other children came over and tried to ask what she was doing, and Ginny had to walk away without answering. She wasn't about to show how special she was in front of them, not when they just called her a freak for it.
Now, years later, Ginny's lips moved into a lazy smile even as she gave Professor Swift another answer that she'd already had memorized.
A Leonismouth, hmmm? That means I'm a descendant of Godric Gryffindor in the direct line. And that would make even some of the stuck-up people who call me a Mudblood sit up and take notice.
Of course, because Ginny's mind never rested once her interest in a subject was stirred, she found her way to the Chamber of Courage not long after that. It was mentioned in the same books that Myrtle had read saying Gryffindor's familiar was a lion and he was a Leonismouth. Many people disregarded them, preferring to focus on the legends associated with well-known artifacts like the Sorting Hat and the Sword of Gryffindor, or the one that said Gryffindor had driven Salazar Slytherin from the school after a battle that lasted five days.
Ginny read the descriptions of the Chamber of Courage in the books, which always tucked about the right hand and the dexter side, and systematically examined every wall on the right side of the school, whether it was in a corridor, bathroom, classroom, or even the Slytherin common room. A simple flick of her hair and a smile at Orion Black—who visibly couldn't decide whether he was terrified of her or in love with her—and she had the chance to scour the common room under a Disillusionment Charm to her heart's content.
In the end, she found nothing until she was on the seventh floor, almost opposite the entrance to Gryffindor Tower, which was fitting enough, Ginny supposed. There, she located a carved lion, facing to the right, beneath a faded tapestry with trolls on it.
"Open," Ginny said, focusing hard on the carved lion and on the memory of talking to the lioness at the zoo, and the carving shivered.
Then it seemed to grow in depth and height, so that for a second a lion with a shadow was spinning on the wall to face her, sitting up and curling its tail around its hind legs with an air of regal authority. Its mouth stretched, wider and wider, and its mane spiraled around it. Then the illusion, or magic, was gone, and a carved door stood there with long, parallel marks marching down its right side.
Like the slashes of a lion's claws, Ginny thought happily, and hooked her fingers into the marks. The door slid open.
A long set of stone stairs led down. The stairs were lit by some soft, bright yellow light whose source Ginny couldn't discern. She stepped into the passage and was about to start down when something else occurred to her. The door was visible now, and no one who wasn't as special as she was deserved to share in its secret.
She turned back to the door and snarled, "Close."
The door shivered, and then the stone wall that had been leaking light around the edges solidified and became an ordinary-looking wall again. Ginny laughed. She was willing to bet that, from the outside, the door had gone back to looking like an ordinary carved lion.
She turned and hurried down the stairs, her steps light, already thinking what a grand hiding place this would be.
The Chamber of Courage was a huge room with columns to support the roof, lit with the same white light that marked the stairs, and statues of lions and lionesses leaping, stalking, feeding on painted and bloody prey, and sleeping, everywhere Ginny looked. But it was the huge and motionless creature in the middle, which she would have thought was another statue if not for the faint stir of its breathing, that took her breath away.
A chimera.
Ginny walked around it, admiring the tawny fur that sheathed most of its head. The fur changed to gleaming golden fleece on the goat's body, and wicked horns curled up from the edges of its head. And, of course, its tail was a dragon's, with scales the color of emeralds, woven around itself many times, and with a wedge on the end that looked to be perfect for hitting enemies.
Ginny sighed. What if Slytherin had never fled? What if Godric Gryffindor had had him devoured by the beast in the Chamber?
Ginny honestly didn't think that that was true, because from what she had been able to read, her ancestor was pretty disgustingly on the side of the righteousness, but it was amusing to think about.
"Wake, great one," she purred, carefully focusing on the chimera's head to keep herself from falling back into English. The lions' tongue seemed to be coming easier all the time, however. With luck, she wouldn't have to concentrate on the visualization for very long.
A shiver ran through the chimera's body. It slowly sat up, eyes still closed, and stuck its tongue out in a yawn like any cat. Then it rolled its head from side to side as if to check the balance of its horns, and finally opened its brilliant golden-green eyes, staring at her.
Ginny bit her lip to keep from bursting out laughing. There was such madness in that gaze, but humor, too. The chimera was like her.
"Someone who speaks the language of the noble beasts," said the chimera. "What is your name, mistress?"
"Ginny Weasley," Ginny said, because she was sure of that by then, no matter what the Weasleys still in Hogwarts said. She moved a step forwards and raised her hand, and the chimera bent down so she could stroke its fur, a handful of shining warmth like condensed sunlight. "What was your purpose in being here?"
"I am to defeat the enemies of the line of Gryffindor. My master left me here, enchanted to sleep and never age, after he discovered treachery hiding in the heart of his school."
Ginny smiled and nodded. "And you must be hungry without feeding for centuries."
"My master made me so that I did not need to eat except when awake. But if you are going to eliminate your enemies, then I could eat, mistress."
Ginny had to work hard to contain her chuckles as she said, "There is someone I want you to eliminate. I'll bring him down here and—introduce you to him."
Ginny had thought of bringing Charlus Potter down to the Chamber, but he wasn't one of the people in love with her. And he wasn't as annoying as Hollis Weasley, who turned his nose up whenever he saw Ginny, but also couldn't stop watching her and her cascade of scarlet hair from the corner of his eye.
Ginny had no idea how they were related, and didn't care. He was probably a distant cousin. What mattered most was that he wouldn't be able to resist following her, particularly if she dared him to do it.
His eyes went satisfyingly wide when Ginny growled the door of the Chamber open, and he looked at her as if trying to discern whether she was watching him. Ginny gave him a half-smile, and Hollis blurted, "You are a Leonismouth!"
"Yes, I am," Ginny said, and led him down the stairs. "This is the first time I've ever shown this to someone. The Chamber of Courage, Godric Gryffindor's secret lair."
Hollis's eyes were wide as he gaped around the chamber; he almost stumbled coming off the last of the stairs because he was so busy looking. "I'm sorry that I ever doubted you, Ginevra," he breathed, using the name Ginny had started telling people was hers. "What a magnificent place this is!" He reached out and stroked the flank of a carved lioness, which Ginny found herself inexplicably annoyed by. "Did you find any treasure here?"
"Only one, but it was rather large, I must say."
"Could I see it?" Hollis turned around and smiled, probably imagining that he could conceal his greed that way. The light flamed in his orange hair and hopeful blue eyes. "Please, little cousin."
If they had called her that years ago, if they had accepted her, then perhaps Ginny wouldn't have had to do this. But they hadn't, so she only smiled and called without taking her gaze from Hollis, "There's someone who wants to meet you, Aurelia, dear."
Hollis's eyes went even wider when Aurelia came around the large column Ginny had told her to hide behind, and his screams were loud and made Ginny sigh as Aurelia chased him around the Chamber, using her fangs and occasionally her claws. But in the end, Ginny had Aurelia hold off on dealing the killing blow, because she needed to do it herself.
She knelt beside the bleeding, shrieking Hollis and shook her head. "I would have more bravery if I was dying," she told him, and slit his throat.
The volcanic light came upon her again as she made her third Horcrux, and directed the shard of soul to take refuge in Aurelia's body. Aurelia stretched and snarled a little as the soul-piece settled, but licked all around her fangs and said, "No," when Ginny asked if that had hurt her.
Someone might be able to take her armband away from her and melt it down, or find a way to burn the diary, but killing a giant chimera who would sleep away all the years when Ginny wasn't here was another matter. Ginny smiled and caressed Aurelia's fur as her chimera tore hungrily into her meal.
I look forward to unleashing her on the other students.
In the end, unfortunately, Ginny didn't get to do that, because the disappearance of Hollis Weasley led to a full-scale investigation and the claim that Dippet and Dumbledore would shut the school down if they didn't find the culprit. Ginny hated the thought of returning to the orphanage even a month early, and so she looked about for a target.
There was a boy in her House who was raising an Acromantula under his bed. Since no one had seen Hollis's body and had no idea what kind of creature might have killed him, it was easy enough to blame Hagrid.
Ginny just shook her head when Hagrid was accused and expelled. He should have been more daring and sworn everyone to secrecy.
She reluctantly bade farewell to Aurelia, caressing her neck while the chimera embraced her with her draconic tail. "I hate leaving you here."
"It is not forever, mistress. Someday you will find a way to come back and rescue me."
Yes, she would, Ginny thought. In fact, she ought to write down that idea in her diary so the greedy thing would take and hold it, and remember it for always.
The years passed. Ginny left Hogwarts and entered a low-level job at the Ministry—less than her heritage and her marks deserved, but she was considered to be a Mudblood by the vast majority of the people she encountered.
Ginny grew to hate that, the word Mudblood and the darting eyes and the whispers she wasn't meant to exactly hear, but couldn't ignore, either. And that meant she had to think up a way to punish them.
In the end, she decided that presenting herself as a lost pureblood woman, whose gleam even the tarnish of the Muggle world couldn't cover, was the best way to earn their respect. And all the while that she pretended to hate Mudbloods more than them—well, she did hate Mudbloods, for existing and giving people the idea that she was one of them—she would laugh to herself, knowing they were kneeling at a half-blood's feet.
It turned out to be surprisingly easy. There were people who fell all over themselves to follow her once she spoke in the lions' tongue and they knew she was Gryffindor's direct descendant. Some purebloods had a reverence for the Founders that bordered on the ridiculous. And others looked at her red hair and heard her last name and had no trouble believing she was one of a pureblood family numerous enough that probably not even their members knew all the cousins and branches.
And if a member of that family that had long supported Mudbloods and the like was now turning against them, wasn't that an illustration that the purebloods who hated the Muggle world had been right all along?
Ginny rose on a wave of adoration, and some part of her that would always be a small child weeping in an orphanage was warmed and cradled and rocked. And she made two more Horcruxes, one out of a coronet that was said to have belonged to Gryffindor's first wife and one from a locket said to belong to Salazar Slytherin, because it amused her to use an artifact from Godric's bitterest rival.
She was still hesitating between creating five and six Horcruxes. It was true that seven—six Horcruxes besides her own master soul—was the most magical number, but if anyone ever figured out what she was doing, they might manage to accurately guess how many Horcruxes she had if she chose a number so magical.
In the end, Ginny decided to split her soul into sevenths. Even if someone did manage to guess what she was doing, how were they going to get at the Horcrux hidden in Aurelia? Ginny had never met another Leonismouth.
It only went to show how special she was.
Dumbledore made a nuisance of himself, both on and off the battlefield. He seemed to know exactly who she was, but otherwise, the truth didn't spread outside Ginny's followers. She went to battle with a golden mask over her face and used Fiendfyre as a primary weapon, so her opponents took to calling her the Lady Firebrand.
Fitting, in a way.
Ginny recruited followers from among several pureblood families, but she knew most of them were only playing along because they got to kill Mudbloods, or because they looked forward to excuses to get rid of their political opponents and seize power in the vacuum that opened afterwards. But now, among the younger generation, she was gaining true devotees, people drawn to her by intense loyalty.
And desire.
Barty Crouch, Junior, when he swore himself to her at the base of the black throne Ginny had built in her manor—such things were tradition—stared at her with a devouring awe that pleased Ginny, and she let him kiss her hand. Severus Snape, whom her followers said was a Potions genius, fell to his knees when he saw her, and seemed particularly focused on her flowing red hair.
With some questions, Ginny learned that he had had a red-headed Mudblood friend who had given up on their friendship. She was immensely amused.
And then…then there was Bellatrix.
"My lady."
Bellatrix Lestrange curtsied before her, something Ginny didn't require of her female followers, but didn't discourage, either. When she straightened up, her dark eyes swept over Ginny's body, halting on her face.
Ginny waited, interest piqued, to see what she would do. Her followers and their families regularly praised Bellatrix as the most beautiful woman of her generation, and apparently she had had her pick of suitors. She had chosen Rodolphus Lestrange for his money and magic, Ginny understood.
Could a woman like that be a loyal follower of hers?
Bellatrix's lips parted, and her breasts rose and fell in one long sigh.
Yes. Yes, she can. Ginny was herself enchanted by the look of enchantment on Bellatrix's face. She was looking at Ginny not as someone who would help her accomplish political ideals, but as someone who was the embodiment of a long-cherished dream.
Ginny removed the golden mask that she kept on most of the time to hide how youthful her face remained (and, sometimes, how freckled). Bellatrix's eyes widened, dark wells of brimming water, and Ginny stood up and walked down from the throne and put her hands on Bellatrix's shoulders.
Bellatrix shivered for her.
"I think," Ginny said softly, "that I will permit you to call me Ginevra."
When Severus Snape brought the word of the prophecy to her, it honestly seemed like another annoyance to Ginny. Or perhaps something Dumbledore had made up. An infant, able to vanquish the Dark Lady? It made no sense.
On the other hand, Snape hadn't heard the whole prophecy. Ginny spun her hawthorn wand between her hands as she sat on her throne, thinking, and wondered if she needed to take the part he hadn't heard that seriously.
"My lady?" Snape whispered.
"Be quiet, Severus," Ginny said, not unkindly. She was superior enough not to need her thoughts interrupted or interrogated.
In the end, she decided that she would take it seriously enough to keep an eye on the pureblood families who were expecting a child near the end of July. If none were born who fit the prophecy, then perhaps she never needed to worry. Or at least not until next year.
In the end, two of them were born, and Ginny hesitated a long time over which one to choose and potentially bring into a prophecy that she still half-suspected Dumbledore had made up. He never did trust her, but he also consistently underestimated her.
There was a pureblood Longbottom boy, but Ginny found herself turning away from him. There was a half-blood boy, too, and his mother had red hair, and both his parents, as well as defying Ginny face-to-face, were reputed to be magically powerful.
On the other hand, there was no reason she had to choose only one. Ginny decided that she would go after the Potter boy herself, and send Bellatrix, her most trusted, after the Longbottom boy on the same night. Halloween, when the mixture of Golden and Dark magic Ginny had learned to wield was the most fluid.
Snape flung himself down before her and begged for the life of the red-haired girl. In the end, Ginny laughed and gave it to him. It wasn't the girl she had to worry about.
If she had to worry about anything at all.
And since she hadn't created the sixth Horcrux she had once dreamed of making, Ginny took along a sliver of wood reputed to come from Ravenclaw's wand.
How did it begin?
Perhaps another beginning happened that Halloween night, when Ginny Weasley, the Dark Lady, Lady Firebrand, killed an unarmed James Potter, and faced another red-haired woman who begged for her son's life, and killed her in sheer impatience, and lifted her wand to the infant Harry Potter.
Perhaps the real beginning was when the Killing Curse rebounded, and detached the Dark Lady's soul from her body, and sent it fleeing, in sheer astonishment that such a thing could happen.
Or perhaps it was when an eleven-year-old Harry Potter, who'd heard the tales of the Lady Firebrand's reign for the first time in his life a month before, sat under the Sorting Hat and whispered fervently, "Not Gryffindor, not Gryffindor," not wanting to share a House with the murderer of his parents.
"Not Gryffindor? You're sure? Better be SLYTHERIN!"
But there was another beginning, not that the Lady Firebrand would have thought about it at the time, being preoccupied with the child of prophecy, and not that Harry Potter would have known anything about it, being only a year old himself. That was the birth of a seventh child to the family of Molly and Arthur Weasley.
Supposedly, a longed-for, ready-to-be-adored baby girl.
In reality, a seventh boy, although one with hair of a darker auburn than the rest of the Weasleys, and his own personality even as a baby, not crying often, staring about him with intent dark eyes. He was named Thomas Arthur Weasley, and his parents loved him.
But not, Tom was to think later, as much as they would have loved a girl. He was clad in hand-me-downs and given "gifts" passed down before him through six brothers. Even Tom's middle name, besides belonging to his father, had been used before him as his eldest brother's middle name.
Mum had always claimed that she simply didn't know what else to name him but had to have something, and chose the first one she could think of.
That hardly soothed Tom's feelings.
But he still pressed against the window of the Hogwarts Express as it drew towards the castle for his first year, trying fruitlessly to catch a glimpse of the castle before it appeared, and his hand curled around the diary in his pocket. The diary that had greeted him in its—her—own voice when he started to write in it, and told him he was special.
He had the diary, and he had a thrumming magical power, and his own slightly-older brother was best friends with the Boy-Who-Lived. What wouldn't Tom accomplish, as the first Weasley in Slytherin?
