Disclaimer: This story includes characters and situations that are part of the Harry Potter universe, which is copyright J.K.Rowling, Scholastic, Warner Brothers, Bloomsbury, etc. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made in the production of this FANFICTION. Not many outside resources were needed this time, but I (as always) made extensive use of the Harry Potter Lexicon when writing this chapter.
Author's Note: Sorry for the delays, I was out of touch with the internet for a week and since then I've been struck with a fatal case of writer's block. So I'm currently redrafting an outline, stuck on chapter 34, and trying to put together a couple of other projects to do after I finish this one. Hopefully I'll break through this writer's block fairly quickly, and everything will go as planned.
Expectations of Grandeur: Chapter 27: A Fatal Day
Hermione quietly left the room, and Ginny turned to the foot of her bed to find a small pile of gifts. She quietly opened them; the usual pink sweater and some candy, before heading down to breakfast. When the owl post arrived, so did a letter from Luna, saying that she had heard the story of the 'attack' through her father's contacts at St. Mungos, and hoping that Ginny wasn't going to get brain damage or amnesia, things that her father said might be side effects of a blow to the head. Luna added that, hopefully, Ginny would discover a secret past which she had previously forgotten – a side effect that Luna had, evidently, added herself. Ginny chuckled as she read the letter and thought ruefully that she was quite glad no such secret past had turned up.
That would be altogether too much.
Luna was trying her best to get her father to allow her back in Hogwarts when term began again, but not having much luck – the story that You-Know-Who had infiltrated the school made it seem the least safe place to be at the time, and Luna didn't imagine many students would be returning once holidays were over. She said that her father was working on a huge exposee all about it for the Quibbler, about the other form You-Know-Who was taking, and the fact that there existed, at Hogwarts presently, two incarnations of the Dark Lord, and explained that her father's especial reticence to send her back to the school involved the fact that he firmly believed it. One Dark Lord his daughter could handle, but two might be a little much even for Luna Lovegood.
Ginny smiled. Attached to the letter had been a small package, a box wrapped in blue paper with gold stars and containing a necklace of butterbeer caps just like the one Luna wore herself, with a rather detailed explanation attached of which Ginny could barely understand a single word. She tucked the note, and the necklace, into a pocket of her robes and headed out of the great hall and to the library. She passed Hermione but didn't speak to the older girl., just smiled conspiratorially.
She went to the library every day anymore, spent her afternoons searching for some sign that what she was experiencing with the parchment was normal. Unfortunately, at this rather late date, she had found no such indication and she was beginning to seriously worry. She wasn't going to be taken in again, not by Tom. It was the old proverb – fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. And if Tom had anything to do with Voldemort's invasion of the school, then it was definitely shame on all of them, herself and Dumbledore included, for giving him a second chance.
"You're late," he said when she sat down across from him. "What took you so long today?"
Ginny frowned. "I'm only four minutes late," she answered, looking at the clock, and then continued. "But if you really must know, I got distracted by the gifts. Happy Christmas."
It was Tom's turn to wince. "Happy Christmas, right," he mumbled, and pushed an especially heavy tome towards her. It fell open to a page, already marked, about enchanted books. Ginny shuddered and read. "Enchanted books have been a long-standing part of every Witch or Wizard's life since time immemorial. Charmed letters and missives have been used as a form of encoded communication, information protection, and even (albeit more rarely) as weapons or traps for the reader, conduits for hexes and dark magic. There have been occasional cases of spirits being trapped in letters, until someone should read them and set the spirit free. The methods of entrapment produce a large amount of energy that can be focused to perform various tasks – from materializing a desired artifact as far as a musty sort of resurrection – in which the recreated being is neither truly spirit nor body and must take the body of the victim in order to be fully human. This sort of thing is not at all uncommon and was, for a long time, used as a method for various Dark Lords to ensure their survival long after their own seeming defeats." That was altogether too familiar to Ginny but she barreled on through the text.
"The most simple of such enchanted books and parchments are simple communicating parchments: parchments designed to display a certain, variable, set of information. These parchments are, in rudiment, easy to make and control, and even beginning Wizards should feel free to endeavor to create them without serious problems should the spells backfire. Key to understanding these parchments, however, is understanding essences. Each communicating parchment must have the essence of the thing it communicates in order to function correctly, and this is the principle part of a communicating parchment." Ginny paused for a moment. "Tom, have you seen this?" she asked.
He glanced over the page and pushed it back to Ginny. "Yes, yes, yes, of course I know all of that – how do you imagine I created the parchments in the first place without knowing that?"
Ginny sighed, shrugged, and went back to reading. After a page or so discussing how essences functioned in communicating parchments, the author listed commonly used essences. For a parchment designed to mirror another parchment it was simple; ink. For an area the wizard was instructed to use a thick mud. For a building a sort of alcohol brewed from mold growing on the foundation. At the very bottom, with a note of caution, were two more essences: blood and tears. The book said that blood corresponded to the heart and tears to the mind. She looked up at Tom again. "I think I've found something," she hissed.
He didn't even look up. "I already said, if that book just describes the spells, I've already read all about it. I know the spell I did, Ginevra, what kind of fool do you take me for?"
"But, Tom, it says here," she began, but he cut her off.
"I know what it says – you have to put the essence of a substance into a parchment in order for it to function as a communicator. Right. Can we move on, Ginny?"
"The parchment must have absorbed my blood and tears," she said flatly.
He stopped reading. "Where did you find that?" he asked, shocked.
Ginny pointed out the relevant table, a bit snidely. "It's written right here. I thought you already knew all about it."
"I do," he responded quickly, picking up the book and reading quickly as he spoke. "Of course I know all about it. I just had forgotten this bit, because it wasn't relevant at the time."
Ginny smiled smugly. "At least this means it's controlled. I mean, now we know why it's acting like this – I cried on it when I was so upset with Harry and Ron that one night, and I must have bled on it at some point as well."
Tom set the book down, looking at least reasonably satisfied with this evaluation. "When?"
Ginny sat back and thought. "When did it start acting strange? Showing my emotions and the like? I haven't accidentally cut myself since I found it, at least not as far as I can remember."
Tom furrowed his brow in thought and then replied, "I suppose about halfway between Halloween and the Holidays – when your brother started pestering you to go home."
"But that's not possible," Ginny said after a pause. She hadn't so much as skinned a knee during the year, at least not as far as she could remember. And especially not between Halloween and the end of the term. She rubbed her hands against her robes in thought. She had found out the source of her troubles, only to discover that it made no sense. Logically, essences had to be the answer of the parchment problem. If she had somehow bled on the parchment it explained exactly what was going on; to have the answer so close and so logical only to be proven false was more than she could handle. That was too confusing, too depressing to be true. She rubbed her eyes, trying to think back, and her Quidditch-calloused palms scratched across her face. The blisters had long ago been replaced by tough, wear-resistant tissue and she didn't have the problem of gripping the broom too tightly any more, even when she was scared out of her mind.
And then it hit her. The blisters – when she had tried to destroy the parchment that day the blisters had popped open and she very well might have bled on the parchment. She smiled, another mystery solved. "It had to have been right after the Gryffindor – Slytherin match, Tom. I had blisters on my hands and they tore when I tried to rip the parchment in half."
Tom nodded but then seemed to register what she had said. "You tried to rip the parchment in half? Why?"
"It was too similar to the diary. I had to destroy it, it was so frightening. But the more people told me to get rid of it, the more I wanted to give you a chance anyway."
Tom laughed slightly but looked a little edgy. "I charmed it to withstand a lot of force. It can't be burned or cut either. Just so you know."
Ginny laughed. "Of course I know," she said, "I've already tried."
The feeling of relief was so intense that Ginny almost burst out laughing right there. It wasn't until she saw Tom's angry face and realized what she had said that a cold lump formed in her stomach. She gulped. "Look, I didn't destroy it," she mumbled. "There's no reason to be so upset." Tom was not appeased in the slightest. "What would you have me do? I couldn't trust you; you were evil. That's beyond question – that the last time I had any interactions with you, you were unmistakably out to kill me, and Harry as well. I don't take that lightly. Not like you, apparently."
"Then why did you write at all?" he hissed.
Ginny sighed. "I guess I wanted to give you a second chance, to prove to myself that I wasn't wrong about you first year, when I thought you were the perfect fifth year. I wanted to believe that I hadn't been so easily fooled, or at least that whatever fooled me wasn't Tom Riddle – wasn't the genius and yet compassionate person I heard on the other side of the diary." She paused. "Would you have rather that I gave it to Harry and never written in it?"
"Harry, at least, is honest about what he thinks of me. There's something to be said for that." Ginny was prepared for many things, but an accusation of betrayal and dishonesty was not one of them.
"Something to be said for his disdain of you, then? For his hatred?" she snapped. "Merlin, Tom, this isn't even about honesty. This is about whether or not one person can give someone else a chance or we all just condemn each other because of a name. Is there something to be said for holding a grudge against someone when it's not valid? Is there something to be said for blind hatred because you look like the boy who became You-know-who? I don't think there's anything to be said for that. You can't blame me for not trusting an enchanted parchment that would allow me to communicate with Tom Riddle. That would be absurd. You just get to deal with the fact that, although I'm trying my best to trust you now, I didn't at first. It's life," she said, standing up. "That's the sermon you gave me – be an adult, stop complaining about life and actually live it. People aren't going to trust you at first because you're too similar to You-know-who. It's too close for comfort. You wouldn't ask people to trust Grindelwald, to give him a second chance if he popped up, would you? Your lot in life is hard, sure, because you have to prove to everyone you meet that you aren't what you seem at first. But that's not a reason to revile the people who are working to get past their first impressions. This isn't about honesty. You knew what I thought of you, you knew it the very first day. That I even spoke to you afterwards is incredible. I would expect you to be glad of it, not to despise it." It looked like understanding was dawning on Tom's face. "I have to go. It's not worth my time to be here if you're childish enough not to realize why I wouldn't instantly trust you."
And, with that, she left. She heard Tom stand up behind her and caught his response, barely audible with the distance. "Wanting transparency isn't childish," he said. She pretended not to hear. It wasn't worth her time. It was too much – blatantly too much – to ask of her to have immediately trusted Tom. He should be happy she was trying as hard as she was to prevent Harry and Ron from murdering him right now, happy that she didn't just assume he had intentionally botched the ward and call for someone to get him and take him to Azkaban immediately for conspiring with Voldemort.
When she got back up to the Gryffindor Common Room, it was almost time to head back to the Great Hall for dinner. Harry, Hermione, and Ron were sitting in a tight group near the fire and discussing something. She wondered if she had the willpower to break into their conversation and find out what it was, or even pull Hermione away to tell her about her and Tom's discovery. She doubted that she did, when all was said and done.
In general, Ginny was not one for reminiscence, but she looked back with genuine longing to the times last year (albeit few) when she considered herself part of the loop with those three. It had been so much simpler then, so much less personal and so much less troubling. Tom hadn't been there, and she hadn't been constantly reminded of her troubled first year – she hadn't been able to forget it, of course, but at least there hadn't been that constant reminder of her weakness, her naivete and gullibility. There had been a job to do: get Harry out of his incomprehensible funk. It was a job she could wrap her mind around, a job she could understand and even enjoy a little, much unlike her current job of "Defeat Tom and Voldemort, if possible."
Wasn't that Harry's job, usually? She supposed it was, in the long run, probably going to be Harry who defeated Voldemort. She vaguely wished they had heard the prophecy. Maybe it said something more specific about how they were to defeat Voldemort. Maybe it hinted at the tools that Harry was supposed to use or the spells he had to learn. Or even why Voldemort wasn't dead. Unfortunately, though, the prophecy was destroyed, and at least Voldemort didn't get the information therein. She thought ruefully that at this rate it was more likely to be Harry that killed Tom and some other fellow who actually killed Voldemort, but the Daily Prophet would welcome Harry as their savior simply because he was the boy that lived. She almost laughed at the prospect. Harry was the one who was going to defeat Voldemort. Of course, that didn't mean that Ginny couldn't try – and right now, at least, she stood a better chance of figuring out what was going on than Harry did. She strode past her brother and his friends and climbed the stairs to her dormitory instead.
Once inside, however, her feelings were immediately reversed. She felt very much inclined to side with Harry and her brother, upon the sight of a black journal, leather-bound, sitting on her pillow, with a note in a sickeningly familiar scrawl: "Don't worry, I haven't enchanted this one." How could he do that, and expect her to still trust him? It seemed the least she could ask for him to pretend, at least, that he was not the same person she communicated with her first year, the least she could ask for him to pretend not to be an incarnation of Voldemort, but he seemed content at every moment to remind her of that sickening former connection and its disastrous and nearly deadly conclusion. She wanted to tell Harry and Ron all about it, to set them on him as she knew they would, like rabid dogs, if she so much as asked. But she also knew it would be cross-purposes, and potentially stupid, so she threw the diary into the fire and watched its reassuring crackle instead, telling herself that she was burning her connection with Tom along with it, at least until he would forgive her.
Meanwhile, Tom was not happy. He had walked around the frozen lake to get some perspective on what Ginny had told him. The fact of the matter was that while he knew she was being honest and probably wise in what she had said, he felt entirely at sea. He wasn't himself. He hadn't been himself since he woke up. He was used to being charismatic and proud, genius, lauded and celebrated by the Slytherins and despised and feared by everyone else. He was used to getting his way in just about everything. But now he was hated and looked down upon by the Slytherins, reviled but certainly not feared by the Gryffindors, his closest ally was Albus Dumbledore himself, and the only people who even seemed to respect him were Ginny Weasley and Hermione Granger, the mudblood and the blood traitor, and even they didn't regard him with an ounce of the deferential fear he was used to. Things were resolutely not going his way.
But, try as he might to blame everyone else for the fact that his position seemed utterly impossible, he couldn't help but notice that Ginny was right. Maybe the reason he was in this position to begin with was he had been too brash, too expectant in the first few days, and lately had fell into a childish funk. He knew that one certainly couldn't impress people with childish tantrums, especially not compared to Draco Malfoy, who had to be the king of childish tantrums. He could have answered, on his very first day, that what would get him back his idyllic position was not brash pride and confrontation but rather charisma, grace, flattery, and undeniable power. Of the four, he had shown only one, and so it was no surprise that he was failing so miserably.
Of course, the real problem, he decided, was that he was trying to define himself as good or bad, pro-Voldemort or pro-Harry, when really he wanted to define himself as pro-Tom. That's what he always had been, what he always would be. He was a free agent. He was not beholden to anyone, he owed no one allegiance or favors, and that was a good thing. He smiled, having once again found his center. He wondered how much of a fool he had appeared to be. He realized, then, that the one thing that he had wanted to do since he woke up, not because it was good or bad but simply because it was intriguing, was figure out Ginny Weasley. And, conveniently, he had a map of her mind. He returned to the library and found a secluded corner to tried to piece together the watermark. He magnified sections, he sensitized and desensitized the whole thing, and darkened the ink so that it was easily readable. He was trying to color code it somehow when Madame Pince found him and chased him out of the library, yelling at his back that no magic was allowed – and what if he had destroyed the books, the rare books, what would he have done then?
He returned, disgruntled, to the Slytherin common room, and set up shop there. People in Slytherin all despised him too much to really take notice or be nosy into what he was doing with a parchment, and most of them had by now heard of Draco Malfoy's rather fated encounter with whoever was on the other end, so they stayed away from him even more stubbornly. He would figure out how to return to his former, prominent place among them once he had deciphered his chart, which he figured would not be long. Truth be told, it wasn't long before Tom had a scribbled, constantly changing, but at least legible map of Ginny's inner workings. He considered that, in the scheme of things, this counted as a huge windfall in his "Understand Ginny Weasley" plan.
What upset him was the fact that she was, right now, most certainly thinking of him, and the thoughts were anything but positive. A repeating theme was Ron beating him with various sharp and blunt objects, cursing him and chasing him out of the school, and otherwise torturing him. He could also see this was because she did not take to the diary in the slightest, and she suspected him of working for Voldemort and intentionally botching the ward in order to allow Voldemort a way into the school. He frowned, there was nothing he could do to disabuse her of her unfortunate misconception at the moment. Or rather, there was nothing he could do that wouldn't be potentially very dangerouns and horribly unethical. And at least for the moment, he would rather remain both unharmed and reasonably ethical. He didn't have to be overly virtuous, but a little bit of goodness never hurt anyone, he reasoned. Or at least, he figured that the anger Ginny felt towards him at the moment was only a hundredth of the fury and hatred she would pin him with if she found out that he used the parchment to control her thoughts. And he didn't want Ginny to hate him; he was fairly confident that if she hated him she would ignore him, and if she ignored him his plan to understand Ginny Weasley, and, he had to admit, control Ginny Weasley, would fail miserably.
So instead of touching anything on the parchment, he just read. He read all night, noticed when Ginny fell asleep and when she began to dream. He read until his eyes watered at the thought of the watermark.
And the more he read, the more he knew that he was in trouble.
Deep, deep trouble.