The Difficulties of Avoidance
by dead2self
A/N: It's been awhile, hasn't it! I love this story, but sometimes it just won't write. I'm not sure I'm entirely satisfied with the writing in this chapter (where have you heard that before?), but editting is always an option. I would feel bad for holding it back even longer now that its finished. I do, however, enjoy the action of the chapter, and a few strands of plot fell in my lap that I think I'll have some fun with. To make up for my long absence, this chapter is longer than normal! Slight peace offering? To those of you who have reviewed, the completion of this chapter is mostly to your credit. I feel so motivated when I know people are still reading my story! And the email updates remind me that it exists so I open the word document and keep typing. So, thank you so much for your reviews!
"Do you suppose Tom likes Divination?" Luna asked, holding up a copy of Predicting the Unpredictable: Insulate Yourself Against Shocks.
Ginny wrinkled her nose, happy for never having taken the subject. "I'd put my money on him having a Hermione-like attitude towards Divination."
"I myself would guess that he takes it somewhat seriously," Luna answered, placing the book on the feeble stack that floated alongside them. She picked up Broken Balls: When Fortunes Turn Foul and furrowed her brow over whether or not to select it as well. For a brief moment, a certain Prophecy, a specific instance of You-Know-Who's belief in Divination, flashed into Ginny's head. She pushed it stubbornly away and quickly held up Quidditch Through the Ages ironically.
"I think we can both agree he isn't an avid Quidditch fan." Luna propped an eyebrow at her and Ginny shrugged. "Can you imagine him all bundled up in the cold cheering for Slytherin?"
"I suppose not." Luna wandered down another row of shelves, and waved to Ginny with Prefects Who Gained Power. "I'm nearly certain he would like this."
Ginny took the book and thumbed through it. "As long as it doesn't mention You-Know-Who. He was a prefect and he certainly gained power. Actually, we should probably check all these books before we give them to him – we don't want it to slip out on accident anything about You-Know-Who now."
"How much does he already know?" Luna asked.
"I suppose everything I knew up until my first year," Ginny answered. "Maybe more. But it can't hurt to be careful."
Luna nodded, turning her wide eyes back toward the shelf, trailing a finger down it as she walked. Ginny tossed the book onto the stack and followed Luna with a huff. "This is pointless. He isn't going to read half of them, and he certainly won't be thankful for them. The only things we know he likes are too dangerous to give to him."
"What else can we do? We just have to take small steps to get to know him."
Ginny's eyes wandered over the bookshelves that towered over their heads and wondered just how many small steps it would take. Surely Riddle would like at least one book in the Hogwarts library, but it would take decades to go through the entire collection unless you were Hermione. Or, Ginny supposed as she alighted upon an ingenious idea, Tom Riddle.
"Luna, how far back do you think Madam Pince's records go?" she asked, whipping out the Marauders Map. There was Madam Pince, her ink dot solidly at the front desk.
"Rather far, I believe," Luna answered. "I don't see why they would ever erase them.
"Then I need you to get Madam Pince away from her desk. I'm breaking into her office to see exactly what Tom Riddle likes to read."
Luna's eyes grew owlish. "Ginny if she catches you, you'll never set foot in the library again!"
Ginny could not help but laugh. It was not often that her friend showed her Ravenclaw colors so brashly. "There are worse fates," Ginny said, reminding herself vaguely of all her brothers but Percy. "Besides, that's why you need to go distract her." At Luna's wide-eyed look of incredulity, Ginny added, "Do you want to make a bunch of tiny steps or one giant step?"
"It could help…" Luna said uncertainly.
"It'll help. Listen, Fred and George broke into Pince's office their second year – wouldn't let us hear the end of it at Christmas. How hard can it be?"
Damn Fred and George, Ginny cursed moments later, nursing the thumb that the doorknob had bitten once Luna had led Madam Pince away from the desk. A simple Freezing Charm silenced the growling doorknob and, apprehensive and wand out, Ginny slipped into the office. As expected, the room was immaculately clean, not a paper out of place on the laboriously stacked desk. Even the books that stood in towering, tottering piles beside the desk looked like they were meant to stand that way.
Not pausing to sightsee, Ginny turned her attention to the wall of ancient wooden filing cabinets. To her shock, they went back much farther than 1945 – she noticed a label claiming records from 1120-1129 AD. Ignoring this, she traced her way along the wall to more modern times, finally locating a drawer for the 1940s. A swift tug on it did nothing, so with a cautious glance at the Marauders Map (Pince and Luna were still wandering on the opposite end of the library), Ginny tapped it with her wand. She narrowly avoided being punched in the gut as the file shot out across the room, taking up its full length. Stowing her wand and the map, she made quick work of scanning through the spindly handwriting. It took two attempts, but she finally emerged with a file boasting Tom Riddle's name. Holding it made her feel oddly powerful – in possession of something that might reveal something about Riddle that he would never tell her himself – but as she opened it hungrily, a piercing shriek filled the office.
"Damn Fred and George!" Ginny shrieked, slamming the file shut to no avail. She dropped it to check the map, where Pince was already flying through the stacks. In a moment of clarity that comes only with desperation, Ginny cried, "Geminio!" and snatched up the duplicate folder, praying that it had worked. Keeping low, she dashed out of the office and tore into the corridor. She did not stop to catch her breath until at least two floors were between her and the library.
Chest heaving, she ducked down beside a suit of armor and opened the folder. With a sharp intake of breath, she threw it down on the floor and jammed the heels of her hands into her temples. It was indecipherable, nothing but lines and squiggles.
"It wasn't because of the duplication spell," Luna said, poring over the file when Ginny showed her later. "I helped Madam Pince clean up since I'm Head Girl. The original file was the same – pleasant to know that Hogwarts considers its students' privacy."
"Yeah, bloody brilliant," Ginny snarled. "I risked getting expelled for nothing."
Indeed, over dinner Professor McGonagall had addressed the student body with more than her usual severity about the afternoon's escapade in the library, threatening expulsion to the culprit if they did not come forward. Ginny thought the woman looked drawn tight around the eyes, and suspected she knew to whom the name Tom Riddle belonged. Her stomach sank at causing the professor additional stress, especially when it had yielded no results.
"It didn't seem like Madam Pince had any way of knowing you did it," Luna offered gently. "And this looks like it might just be a code. It could still be useful." She took the offending papers from Ginny and studied them upside-down.
Ginny bit back an exasperated groan and took the plate of food from the house elf that prodded it at her. She noticed with some sourness that Harry's house elf friend had managed to get to the front lines of food prep again.
"Thank you," she said boldly, and the elf mumbled something polite as he shuffled away, the five hats on his head tottering dangerously.
Ginny's turn with Riddle had been uneventful in the morning since he had pointedly ignored her. He had been strangely docile, eating all his food and not once attempting to look her in the eye. Luna, levitating the stack of books they had procured from the library, hoped to be as successful.
"I'll keep these for now," Luna said, sliding the file into her bag. "I would be the last person Madam Pince would search since I was with her the entire time."
Harper was proving difficult to find on the Marauder's Map (it was not quite curfew, and Hogwarts students had the habit of cutting it close in the corridors), but he was not in the seventh floor corridor so they started making their way upstairs. Ginny kept the map out, folded surreptitiously under her arm to check when no students were near. It was just outside the Room of Requirement that she finally spotted Harper – and he was close.
"Luna! Harper!" She met Luna's eyes and both girls had the same thought at once. No doubt Harper would find distinct pleasure in finding Ginny idling alone in the halls so close to curfew.
"Get in!" Luna cried, tossing the books through the door with a wave of her wand. Ginny dove in after them, barely avoiding catching her robe in the door as Luna slammed it shut. Riddle eyed her with evident surprise as she collected her wits, but said nothing. It seemed things would be going in the same vein as the morning visit.
"Dinner," she called unnecessarily, setting the plate down on his table. Riddle, however, had moved behind her, and was studying a piece of parchment that had fallen among the books. It took Ginny, in hindsight, painfully long to realize what he held.
With a cry, she lunged to snatch the map out of his hands, but he danced out of her reach, eyes scouring hungrily over the parchment. Then, whipping out her wand, Ginny said, "Accio Marauder's Map!" Riddle snarled as it slipped from his fingers, and Ginny caught the map deftly.
"M-Mischief managed!" she said, and the map went blank. She tucked it into her robes.
A terrible grin spread on Riddle's face as he moved toward his dinner. "Indeed."
Now Ginny was silent, berating herself as she watched him eat. Could anyone he had seen on the Map make any difference to what he knew? Would he suspect about Dumbledore if he had seen McGonagall in the Headmaster's office? Ginny just could not believe she had been so stupid, especially after – but she didn't want to think about his empty threats. What could he do to her, really, without a wand? She tightened her grip and levitated the books from where they had fallen.
"We brought more books for you," Ginny said. The words tumbled out shamefully fast and she took care to dial back her nerves after a deep breath. "So maybe something will interest you." He sat bent over his food, silent. She added, "Luna thinks you might fancy Divination, but I thought you'd think it's rubbish. Which is it?"
He did not look at her, but said, "I see no need to satisfy your curiosity. You may place the books with the others."
Scowling at the fact that their two-hour search of the library had come to nothing, Ginny dumped the books unceremoniously on the bookshelf. "Those are library books. If you don't want to read them, we have to take them back."
"I am well aware of how the Hogwarts library functions."
Well, Ginny already knew that. Even garbled, it was clear that Riddle's library record was astonishingly long.
The silence stretched until Riddle was finished eating and mercifully, she was able to send off her Patronus. She waited, but after several minutes, Luna's Patronus still had not hopped through the door.
"Harper," Ginny sighed, planting a hand on her hip. She shot Riddle a look and added, "Our pain-in-the-ass Slytherin Head Boy. You'd love him, I'm sure."
Riddle raised an eyebrow. She sat down against the door, somewhat thankful for the one-sided dialogue.
"Merlin, you probably were him. I can just picture you terrorizing Gryffindor first-years by bullying them into cursed contracts too."
To her surprise, this galvanized Riddle into conversation. "Hardly. I have prefects to deal with the Gryffindors who lack the necessary discretion. I may have been given the honor of Head Boy, but I have more important things to do with my time than enforce archaic rules I flout myself."
"Brilliant," Ginny muttered. "I'm glad being Head Boy just gave you more time to dabble in the Dark Arts."
If he heard her, he gave no indication. "What are you doing now?" Riddle asked as she began rummaging in her bag.
"Homework," Ginny answered, keeping her voice clipped. "At the rate Harper can ramble, it could be awhile before Luna gets away. I have a Potions essay due tomorrow." Spreading a wide array of Potions books around her on the floor, Ginny settled down against the door and pointedly ignored Riddle as she set to work on her essay.
Soon, Ginny was aware that Riddle was standing above her, reading over her work. "Do you mind?" she asked, her mind going immediately to the Marauders' Map tucked deep inside her bag. She pulled it closer.
"Are you dismal in every subject, or just Potions?"
"I'm not even making a Potion; I'm just writing about them. How could you possibly be able to tell if I'm good or bad at it?"
"Because your grasp of theory and the basic Laws is elementary at best."
"I'm just following the textbook. Maybe your theories are out of date."
"It is impossible for Potions theory to change so drastically in only fifty years, and it would take a cataclysmic event to disprove any of the Laws. I find it far more likely that you are parroting information and misunderstanding it."
"Then why don't you just tell me what I'm doing wrong instead of standing there?"
"I doubt there's anything I can say that you haven't already heard from your professors. It has been my experience that some people are just hopeless."
Rolling her eyes, Ginny eyed the length of her essay. It looked like she had one foot finished and two to go. She dipped her quill and no sooner had she written another inch than Riddle gave a disapproving hum. She threw her quill down.
"If it's that important to you, why don't you just write it for me yourself?"
"Oh, but that would be cheating," he said in an overly sweet tone she had never heard him use before. She suspected he was trying to imitate her.
"Some Dark Lord you are," she scoffed. "Can't even cheat on a seventh year Potions essay."
Riddle's eyes lost the nasty twinkle at her expense. Instead, he eyed her with obvious distain. "You say that as if I subscribe to your petty morality. Mark this, Weasley. There is neither good nor evil, merely power, a quality that, as the Dark Lord, I possess. In any case, there is no reason for me to help you. There is nothing I want that you would be willing to give me."
"Try me."
"A wand."
Ginny raised a brow, but her fingers found her own wand in her pocket. "Are you trying to make a joke?"
"No," he deadpanned, but it veered into a smile. "A book on wandlore then."
"A book? Seriously?"
"Lovegood has been hounding me for days about reading material. Is this not what you wanted? Would you rather I ask for another look at your delightful map?"
Ginny's stomach lurched, and she knew he was goading her. Time to end the conversation. "Why don't you tell her then?" she answered sourly. Riddle remained quiet, so she shook her head. "I don't even know why we're talking about this. I don't need help on my Potions essay. Leave me alone so I can write another foot."
The unsettled feeling did not subside until well after she had left the room, and only then did she realize that Riddle had given her exactly what she wanted all along – just like he had said. Somehow, the fact that he was right made her reluctant to tell Luna about his book request, just out of spite. When Luna went back to decoding Riddle's old library records, Ginny excused herself to finish her essay.
Luna was less concerned about the gaff with the Marauders' Map than Ginny. "If he knew Dumbledore was dead, he would have wrestled you to the floor for your wand just then," she had said offhand after finally releasing Ginny from the room. But where Luna was nonchalant, Ginny saw potential disaster. Between worrying who he might have seen on the map and who he had not seen, she was lucky to grind out the full three feet required for her essay. She even sat stock straight in her bed after drifting off to sleep because she had to make sure that he had not found a way to snatch it out of her bag. She was only able to sleep after folding the map under her pillow.
The next day's classes found her groggy and prone to staring out windows. She fell asleep on top of her Defense manual during their self-taught period, and McGonagall had to shake her awake to take points from Gryffindor. However, snow had fallen overnight, blanketing the grounds under an unusually bright day. Her lethargy was nothing a day outside in the brisk winter air could not handle, and a snowball fight with her old Quidditch team put her in such high spirits that she imagined Luna was right about Riddle and the map. Instead, as she trundled toward the lake to meet Luna, she puzzled over Riddle's request for a book.
Luna was busy studying Tom Riddle's library file in the reflection off the lake. She had charmed them into the pages of an old battered notebook to disguise the stolen records, and was currently convinced that the magical properties of the lake might somehow transform the letters. Unconvinced that the lake even had magical properties to begin with, Ginny had nevertheless agreed to accompany her. Watching Luna labor fruitlessly over the pages, tattered Spectrespecs balancing at the tip of her nose, almost brought her to admit that Riddle had finally asked for a book, but she spotted Harper laboring toward them before she had a chance. She nudged Luna, who noted him with a huff, marked her place with her glasses, and stowed the book.
"Good afternoo—" she started, but Harper broke over her before the greeting could escape.
"What exactly have you been saying about me, Lovegood? Weasley?" His breath showed in furious puffs, floating in the sharp air, but his eyes kept darting over his shoulder.
"We haven't said anything about you Harper," Ginny answered. "Why should we?"
"Oh yes you have. I have it from several sources that this—this—" Words seemed to fail him, until, "—this travesty of a rumor came straight from you!"
"What rumors?" Ginny asked and Harper's mouth worked soundlessly, sputtering out something like, "Me—Looney—are—"
"You and Luna are what? Not strict enough reformers? Spit it out Harper!"
While Harper still labored against the words, a small "Oh!" erupted from Luna and her hands shot over her mouth. She turned wide eyes on Ginny, and for a moment looked like she was about to laugh.
"Will someone please tell me what is going on?"
"Rumors that Tom and I are dating, Ginny," Luna said, her voice now clear of laughter. At Ginny's incredulous look, she motioned to Harper. "You know, Thomsen Harper – Tom."
While she admired Luna's restraint, Ginny could not hold back the gale of laughter that overtook her. Clutching at her sides and pointing weakly between the pair of them, she gasped out, "You and him?"
"This is not a humorous situation, Weasley," Harper snapped, though he was pink to his ears, and not with cold.
"Maybe for someone with no sense of humor," Ginny wheezed.
Harper wheeled on Luna, tripping over his words as Ginny guffawed into her scarf. "Lovegood, even you must agree that we—that we must maintain a level of decorum and—and respect among the student population, do you not?"
"It is only a rumor, Harper," said Luna serenely. "People spread all sorts of rumors about me. With some practice, you will find them quite easy to ignore."
"I do not want to practice, Lovegood. I will not have my reputation smeared with any more association with you than need be."
Luna's mouth thinned and she went barely pink. Ginny stepped between the pair, her mirth forgotten. Instead, she dearly wished she could hex Harper into the lake. "What is that supposed to mean?" she asked.
"I trust you can piece it together," Harper sneered.
"Ginny, please," Luna said, putting a hand on her shoulder. Her voice was void of its dreamy quality, and in once glance Ginny knew that this Tom would be no match after several months of dealing with their Tom. Harper met her eyes, but he shifted back on his heels. "I need a private word with the Head Boy."
"Alright," Ginny said, backing away from the pair. It appeared Luna did not need an overabundance of privacy, for Ginny had gotten only two steps before her friend started berating Harper for his reaction to the rumor. As she trundled up to the castle, Harper was treated to a lengthy lecture on the importance of self-esteem and disregarding the unmerited opinions of others.
Ginny thought he looked properly mollified when she spotted him in the Great Hall later, but his ire had not abated toward her. Ginny and Luna had arranged to meet in front of the Room of Requirement, Ginny fetching the food alone so that Luna could meet with Flitwick about her NEWT progress. Harper was hard on her heels as she left the Great Hall, hanging back but no doubt waiting for an opportunity to take points. Hoping to shake his interest, she paused in front of Slughorn's office, only to be surprised when the door opened and Astoria Greengrass shuffled out.
"Brilliant, Miss Greengrass, just smashing. Do remind me to put you in contact with Derwent Shimpling. He does love his jokes, but he's a smart one—er, relatively." Ginny jumped back to make way for the pair of them, but Slughorn had already caught sight of her.
"Ah, Miss Weasley, this is convenient. I meant to have a word with you about your Potions essay after class, but now will do nicely. Do come in."
Harper moved slowly past them, nodding to Slughorn, and Ginny could think of no excuse before she was ushered inside. She scuffed her feet as Slughorn waddled in front of her, moving through the potions classroom into Slughorn's office. She had served several detentions here with Snape, but the room had acquired quite a bit more velvet since its previous occupant vacated the Potions post. A potion was brewing in the corner, giving off a burnt sugar smell, and altogether the dungeon room managed to look brighter, if a bit stuffy.
"Please have a seat, Miss Weasley. I wanted to speak with you about your most recent essay." Ginny's heart clenched and she lowered herself into a velvet armchair facing Slughorn's desk as he continued. "It is worryingly below your normal standards."
"Oh," she breathed, then pushed her lips together. Hang her Potions NEWT – that was hardly important at the moment. It stung less that Slughorn disliked the essay than the fact that Riddle had been right.
"This has no doubt been a troubling time, Miss Weasley," he continued. "I understand that schoolwork is likely not your first concern at the moment." He paused, unblinking behind his mustache, and then coughed. "You and the Headmaster were close, I believe?"
The question caught Ginny oddly off-center. "Er, he knew Harry well," she answered. "I've always, you know—I admired him, sir. We all did."
"Of course, of course," Slughorn said, nodding magnanimously. There was a heartbeat's rest, and then, "And your parents were well acquainted as well? Dumbledore did speak highly of your mother's roast beef."
Ginny shifted in the seat, watching her professor with a newly critical eye. "Yeah, it's good, sir," she said.
"No doubt your parents are worried. They must write to you, naturally, to tell you of news from home."
"Not any more than usual," she said. "I've—We've all been busy."
Slughorn surged forward in his seat, nodding sharply. "Yes, yes, very busy. Dumbledore left many shoes to fill, did he not?"
Sensing that this conversation could lead nowhere safe, she hastened to interject, "Sir, you wanted to talk about my essay?"
As Slughorn settled back, she imagined he looked disappointed. He propped his fingers in his bulging waistcoat. "Yes, Miss Weasley, I did. It was quite distracted, with hardly two lines properly dedicated to the topic you were assigned to discuss. Nonetheless, you are a student with great potential, and I would be remiss if I did not encourage you to your full capacity."
"Yes, sir, I'm sorry," she answered automatically. Her legs itched to move, thinking of Luna waiting on the seventh floor.
"I have never known you to be a particularly lazy student, Miss Weasley, so I can only surmise that you have… gotten yourself in over your head, so to speak. If you are burdened with extracurriculars or… various side projects… do know that all the staff is available to assist you."
Ginny froze for the barest of seconds. Did he just— But her mouth tumbled quickly into action, playing an unwilling trump card. "No it's nothing like that, sir. It's just…" She willed tears, a trick she had picked up at an early age with six brothers. "It's Harry, sir. We just broke up." She threw in a decent sob for good measure. Professor Slughorn looked faintly horrified, which Ginny thought might be the best thing to result from Rita Skeeter's thrice-damned article. He patted haltingly her with a cumbersome paw of a hand, tinged red around his mustache.
"Er, there, there," he said. "It is quite alright, Miss Weasley. I am prepared to allow you to re-write your essay, if you wish."
"Th-Thank you," blubbered Ginny, and found herself soon hustled out of his office, marked essay in hand. She turned toward the kitchen on shaky legs as she scrubbed at her tearstained cheeks.
Ginny did not know much about Professor Slughorn, but the interview had left a knot in the pit of her stomach. She did not pretend to know every member of the Order, but she had spent her fair share of time in 12 Grimmauld Place, and she had seen the old photographs. Slughorn, despite being a friend of Dumbledore, had not been in any of them.
And Dumbledore's trust wasn't always well-placed. The thought came unbidden, with a flash of Bill prone on the floor. Ginny swallowed, pushing away the image. Bill was fine, she reminded herself. She busied herself with Riddle's meal and helped herself to a biscuit for good measure.
It was getting close to curfew now, and Harper dogged her footsteps by the time she got up to the second floor. She managed to lose him by doubling back towards Gryffindor tower and timing the moving staircase just right. When she reached the seventh floor, she was dismayed to realize that Luna was not waiting there. Knowing an encounter with Harper tonight might put Gryffindor beyond hope for the House Cup, she decided not to risk it and let herself into the Room. Mind swimming, it was easy to ignore the tiresome routine of giving their sullen captive his food. It seemed that every thread of her life was converging in one giant tangle. Harper was more paranoid than ever. She could not give Slughorn any more reason to believe she was… well, whatever he had been fishing to find out. But then, with all her other NEWTs and Riddle to placate, how in the world would she be able to produce even a passable essay? She had thought her first attempt was good enough—damn Riddle for being right. And then there was the library records, and Riddle's request for a book that still niggled at the back of her mind.
A thought struck Ginny. Riddle was a proud bloke, one not likely to appreciate charity. What he probably did appreciate was an exchange, one that would smooth out most of the knot if she played things right.
"I failed my potions essay," she blurted out before common sense had a chance to settle.
"Rightly so," Riddle murmured without facing her.
Ginny wandered closer, fingering the essay in her bag. "My professor was asking about why my work has been so bad."
"He did not assume it was your poor intelligence?" Riddle still did not look up, but Ginny swore she saw him roll his eyes.
Planting both feet beside his chair, she leaned closer. "The reason I haven't been focusing on school is because I've been taking care of you."
Now Riddle shot a blazing glance at her, so fast that she stumbled back to keep from catching his eye. "So I am a secret? Fascinating."
Ginny bit her lip before she could compose herself, and then there was no use saying otherwise. She measured her words to answer truthfully. "We can't trust everyone," she said. "If certain people find out, there's a chance you won't get fed at all."
Mirth blossomed on his face, and he lounged back in the chair. "Marvelous threat, Weasley."
"It isn't a threat. You know I'm telling the truth."
"Then I am at the mercy of your potion grades?" He propped his feet on the table. "My, this is a dire situation."
Ignoring the sarcastic note, she stepped closer to him, dropping the roll of parchment into his lap. "It's an easy fix. You want a wandlore book, right? You'll edit my potions essay for me, help me understand it, and I'll get you whatever book on wandlore you want."
His eyes slid over her work and he frowned. "Edit it? Such atrocity would require me to start from scratch." Ginny dug in her bag for a quill and inkwell, sensing victory, and handed them to Riddle.
"Write me a new essay for all I care. You have the better side of the deal – both a new book and the chance to keep eating every day. I'll bring the book tomorrow morning, and if that's finished, you can have it."
Silently, Riddle scratched out the title of a book on the corner of her essay and ripped it off for her. Waving her off, he began to apply liberal amounts of ink to the margins of her essay, crossing out generous portions of her hard work. She left him parchment and sent off her Patronus. This would mean an early-morning trip to the library.
The morning brought low light and the threat of another snowfall, not one that encouraged Ginny to wake early. But before breakfast and before Luna's turn to take care of Riddle, Ginny did just that. She skirted past the Grey Lady just outside the library and got a chilled stare for her trouble.
"Sorry for interrupting your morning haunt," Ginny grumbled once she was probably out of hearing.
It took some time to locate Riddle's book, as it was buried in a dusty corner of the library. It was a thin volume, but the length of Ginny's arm. A quick scan showed it full of sketches, wand cross-sections and various wand cores. Its margins were sparse with commentary in spindled script. The book stuck awkwardly out of her pack, but she tucked it under her arm while she walked. Once out of the library, she managed to shrink it down to a manageable size. Doubtless such an act would give Madam Pince a conniption, but it was not her worst library crime of late.
That night as they collected Riddle's meal, Ginny felt oddly eager. No doubt she was excited to be rid of two annoyances in one go. It was not, she reprimanded herself, anticipation for one giant step forward in their plan to convert Tom Riddle. Still, she could not repress a shock of delight when Riddle rose to meet her, essay in hand and somewhat civil in passing it to her. The moment lasted until he opened his mouth.
"Atrocious. I tried the best I could while retaining your juvenile voice."
"Blimey!" Her first thought was that he had replicated her handwriting to an eerie degree. Then, as she looked closer, her admiration slipped. She fixed him with a frown. "I know how to spell, Riddle,"
Riddle took his plate from her, digging in where he stood. "That was not abundantly clear in your first attempt," he said around a mouthful of sprouts.
Ginny finished her hasty perusal of the essay and proceeded to slap him on the shoulder with it. "This doesn't sound like me at all!"
"Indeed," he said, waving her off. "The ideas I expressed are coherent and well within the bounds of logic and fact."
"Oh, shut it. I'll have to write this all over again, won't I?"
"Nonetheless, I upheld my end of the bargain, Weasley. Where is yours?"
Huffing, Ginny pulled the shrunken book from her pack and returned it to its original size. "What do you even want a book on wandlore for?" she asked as she handed over the slim volume. "Are you going to try to whittle down one of your chair legs?" As she said it, she had brief sweep of fear that it might be possible.
Riddle paged through the book, already reading hungrily. It seemed he was able to multitask. "This may come as a shock, Weasley, but some of us enjoy reading merely for the pleasure of learning new things."
Ginny doubted that he cared so much for the learning itself as for what he could do with any newfound knowledge, but didn't say so. Instead, a curious thought formed in her head. She had not told Luna about his book request, but neither had he. Thinking out loud, she answered, "If that's why you wanted to read it, you would have asked Luna for the book in the first place."
"If I had asked Luna, she would already know why I wanted the book." Glancing up from the book, Riddle's eyes glittered and she fought back a shiver.
"You think I won't tell her now?"
"I know you won't tell her now," Riddle said. "She's Head Girl, isn't she? You're not the type to put her in the position of choosing between your friendship and her duties, are you?"
Ginny was not about to tell him that she had already done so several times. But despite numerous opportunities to ask Luna what Riddle might want with a wandlore book, she could not bring herself to do it. Once again, Riddle had been right about her – but not entirely. Somewhere deep down, she remembered her clandestine friendship with Riddle, the excitement and intimacy of something hidden. It was only a potions essay and a wandlore book, but if she had any hope of reimagining Riddle as someone other than her enemy – every hex, played the voice at the nape of her neck – maybe she had to reclaim what little joy she had found in him in her first year.
Or else she really did not want to tell a Ravenclaw that she was having Tom Riddle write her next potions essay.