Not Forgotten
Chapter 3
Ginny was enjoying her Saturday. Well, as much as she could. It wasn't really easy to enjoy a day after you've been hearing a voice comment on random aspects of your life. She was beginning to get used to hearing (and, well, ignoring) a certain commentator. Tom always managed to annoy her, but she refused to hold an argument with her own brain.
Not exactly your brain.
She would find a way to get rid of him. She swore by Merlin. Bustling about in her house, she got ready to go to the Burrow.
"Vulcan!" She called out gently, watching in pride adoration as her dark-brown owl swooped in, landing on her couch and digging its claws into the material. She frowned. Okay, maybe Vulcan still needed a little more training. She handed him a treat, and he hooted in thanks.
He was a very ugly owl, honestly. That's why she chose the name, Vulcan after the god of the forge. The ugliest God. But still a divine force nevertheless. And she really thought that Vulcan was extremely intelligent. He also loved her and hated everyone else—the way she liked it.
He was on her side.
She handed him another treat, which he ate quickly, and then a letter addressed to Luna. She was just telling Luna how she was and everything, and all that usual girl gossip. Luna was a busy person, dealing in the Ministry Department of Magical Creatures. It was an occupation that led Luna to all sorts of places. When she was away, they corresponded by way of mail, and when she was here—well, Little Angel's Cafe made a lot of money of the both of them!
Vulcan took the letter gracefully, and left.
Ginny looked over at her clock. She was going to be early, but that was fine. With a last glance about her apartment to make sure everything was okay, she swished her wand and apparated.
Honestly, she should have been late. She spent the next hour just sitting on the couch in the living room after throwing gnomes around in the backyard. It was so comfortable here in the Burrow, but sometimes she enjoyed the silence of her own house.
"GINNY! Look at you, almost twenty and just sitting there—not helping! Your brothers are going to be here soon!" Molly Weasley fretted, bustling about the house trying to get it cleaned up before the rest of the kids arrived. The twins and Ron were already here, what was left was the older one. Molly had decided to have a family dinner.
Ginny knew she should have arrived late. Sighing, she got up and walked to the kitchen. Robotically, she started put down the plates on the table.
I really can't stand your family.
I know, Ginny frowned. That's why you end up trying to kill them.
Do I?
She fumed silently, in her head. Hopefully, her anger and irritation would let him know that he should shut up. To her glee, he didn't comment further.
Ginny had been adamant in not telling anyone about uh—the 'extra' in her head. The only people who knew were Luna and Hermione. She didn't want the stares of pity or the hushed whispers. She didn't want to be left out of the loop again or be called weak. It shouldn't be fair to call someone weak just because a memory delved into their head when they were eleven. For years afterwards, and even to this day, Molly treated Ginny like porcelain. She berated Ginny when the younger Weasley had tried to help with housework upon release from St. Mungo's back then. Ginny never seemed to miss any of the 'secret' glances of sadness in her mother's eyes whenever the subject of diaries was brought up.
She watched Molly give a cry as Percy and Charlie arrived, enveloping them in one of her famous hugs as soon as their limbs were within reaching distance. They let out an 'umpf' upon having the wind squeezed out of them. Molly Weasley's hugs were deadly. Everyone understood this.
Laughter ensued (after some coughing fits), along with questions of 'how have you been' and 'what have you been eating? You look so skinny!' Ginny stood in the kitchen, alone, looking out the window of the Burrow.
She saw rain.
Ugh, she hated rain. It got everywhere.
You used to like it.
She ignored him. He really didn't talk that much—then again, it was Tom she was talking about. He wasn't exactly the most talkative of people. She could feel him observing, but… she sighed. She felt like she was walking for two people. Her body felt so heavy lately, but she hadn't gained any weight. Quite the opposite, her body seemed to be on a downward spiral when it came to weight. (Molly was quite displeased about this. It's all cause she decided to live by herself. If she had stayed with her mother like a good little girl, this wouldn't have happened and so on, Molly had ranted.)
Hermione and Harry had arrived, it seemed, from Molly's frantic yells of "Oh Harry! Hermione!" and the usual Molly-hug. Ginny, upon hearing Hermione's name, decided to enter the living room.
The twins were upstairs, probably up to no good, and Ron was sitting on the couch (soon to be occupied by Hermione and Harry as well). Percy and Charlie were upstairs setting their things down, and Ginny just stood there. She felt a bit awkward. It was hard not to feel awkward when you were around the dream team.
As soon as Hermione saw her, the brunette got out of the seat she was in and hurried towards Ginny—giving her a big hug. Harry grinned up at them. He hadn't said much to Ginny. Then again, he was afraid that she would still be mad at him for the whole job-switching business. Ron was talking animatedly to Harry, and could care less about his sister.
"I've found something." Hermione whispered in Ginny's ear as they hugged. Ahh, the age old way of not drawing suspicion.
Froze.
Ginny's eyes widened. A shiver went up her spine. Something? A cure? Getting rid of Tom? Please, please let it be true. Please let it work. Please don't get my hopes up.
"Ginny, stop hyperventilating!" Hermione added, her eyes wide.
Calm, calm, calm.
Breath in, out.
Ginny breathed. "Tonight?" She plastered a smile on her face, so that the boys wouldn't get suspicious (which usually led to general nosiness). Hermione smiled in confirmation.
Ginny could feel Tom's curiosity rise, mixed with anger. Her teeth grit itself in a way that was out of her control, and her fists clenched by themselves like a marionette on strings. A part of her wanted to jump up and down from excitement, and the other part of her wanted to slap the girl in front of her. It was a bit too much for a girl to handle sometimes.
"Bill!" Molly was near tears. She was so happy, all her children together like this! Usually one or two would be too busy to show up, so this was a rare occasion indeed. Bill, looking tall as ever, grinned back at her.
"Sorry, the children were making a mess. Victoire wouldn't stop crying about Dominique and Louis taking his broom—Well, they're with their mother visiting grandmother now." He explained.
"It's quite all right, now come-come!" Molly gave him a push on the back towards the direction of the kitchen. "You all, get down here for dinner!" She screamed towards the stairs.
Arthur, Charlie, Ron, Percy, and the twins bounded down. Molly gave a sigh. Sometimes, she felt like she was running a schoolhouse of children.
"Mum, did you hear about what that blasted git Malfoy tried to do?" Ron whined as everyone began to sit down at the dinner table. "His stupid company tried to appeal to the court, saying that Hermione and I got out jobs solely cause of Harry. That arrogant arse-ho--"
"RON!" Molly shot him a glare. "Language!" Though, she really didn't sound that menacing. It was not okay to use language. It was, however, okay to use language in your head when talking about the Malfoys.
"Well," Ron rolled his eyes, "Now he got the just end of it, eh? 'Draco Malfoy Suffers as Model Vivica DeFrancis Gives Back Ring.'" Ron laughed.
Ginny noticed as Harry paled at the name.
Your brother sure knows how to be sensitive.
Ginny paled at the words.
"Ginny? Are you all right?" Bill, who sat next to Ginny, whispered. She assured him she was, but he just raised a skeptical eyebrow.
Would everyone stop asking her if she was all right? If she wasn't dead, then of course she was all right! And she didn't care if her logic made no sense.
She ate her food in silent frustration. Stupid carrot.
"Charlie, what's up with your arm?" Fred sniggered. "Looks like a kid with bad coloring skills got to it." George added. And they were right, Charlie's arm had bad bruises of purple and gray, along with brown burns.
"Peruvian Vipertooth was a bit grouchy." Charlie grinned sheepishly.
Percy's jaw would've dropped, but he was too dignified for that. "You were messing with those? They're poisonous! They eat humans!"
"Well, this one was just a baby. I didn't get bitten, it was just throwing a small tantrum because it was fed up of eating spiders."
Molly interjected. "That's enough of that talk!" Honestly, no mother wants to hear about how close her son came to being poisoned by a dragon. "Harry, how's work going?"
Blushing because suddenly all pairs of eyes were on him, Harry tried his best not to stutter. "Uhm." He sat up straighter. "It's good." He finished lamely.
Fred and George sniggered. Even Ginny had to hold back laughter. One would think that after all these years, Harry would get used to having a big family dinner—but alas, it was not to be.
xxx
Dinner finished rather late since no one wanted to stop talking. (that's what you get with so many people together). Ginny and Hermione were sitting on the bed in Ginny's room.
"Okay, so, I was looking everything up and," Hermione cast a silencing spell on the room, "there's a lot of things I still don't know." Ginny's face fell.
"But," Hermione continued, "I made a potion specifically for keeping him out of your head. It should work, I mean, everything I looked up pointed to these ingredients, and--"
Ginny hugged her, stopping the flustered girl in her babble. "It's okay. I'm sure it will work. It can't really get worse." She grimaced.
"Are you sure you're up to taking it, Gin?" Hermione sighed desperately.
"What do you mean?"
"You don't exactly look very, uhm, healthy."
"Yes I do."
Hermione raised her eyebrow.
"Okay, fine, maybe I don't. It's what you get after spending hours preparing for the dinner." Ginny prayed Hermione would bite into that excuse.
Of course, the brunette wouldn't fall for such a thing. But there were no further questions on that subject.
"Here. You should take it now, while I'm here to stop anything from happening." Hermione dug something small out of her purse, and cast a spell to enlarge it to its actual size. It was a vial, closed, but still a vial of purple looking liquid. It bubbled a little bit.
Stupid mudblood! Stupid stupid!
Ginny winced. She could feel Tom's anger. Serves him right, ha! She uncorked the vial and drank. Now, let's see how he feels if he didn't exist!
"This tased baaaaa…"
Falling. Falling, weightlessly.
Pain—maybe she wasn't that weightless.
Pain. Oh Merlin, the Pain.
"Ginny!"
It seemed like years later before she regained consciousness. Her eyelids felt heavy, and her head still kind of throbbed.
"Mnrnf." She groaned to let whoever was around to know that she wasn't dead. That was what patients were supposed to do. Somehow, it was harder than it seemed. Her throat was dry and wasn't really willing to comply.
"Ginny? Oh Ginny! Wake up!" A frantic girl voice entered her ears. It has to be Hermione, thought Ginny. I hope her potion worked.
Tom? Excuse me? Can you hear me?
Silence. Victory!
A smile crossed Ginny's face as slowly, she forced herself to open her eyes. Oh, oh, white, white. The tell-tale look of the room, as Ginny's vision slowly adjusted, told her she was in St. Mungo's. What irony.
Brown filled her gaze.
"Erm, Hermione, do you mind not hugging so hard?" Pat, pat.
Why isn't she loosening her hold?
Pat, pat…?
"Oh, I was so worried! I had to tell Molly that you fell asleep, and--" Hermione was close to tears. It had all been her fault. She let go of Ginny, sadness etched across her face.
Ginny looked around.
Holy, What the, Merlin!
She screamed. In the corner sitting in one of the guest chairs was a smirking male. He leaned against the wall nonchalantly, his black hair combed perfectly as his dark eyes fixed on her. He was wearing the Slytherin school robes, his arms crossed in front of his chest. His eyes narrowed gleefully.
In the corner sitting in one of the guest chairs was Tom Marvolo Riddle.
BREATH. In, out, in out.
"What? What's wrong?" Hermione looked around, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion, then turned back to Ginny.
"Hermione…" Ginny gulped. "You don't see him?"
Hermione's eyes widened. "No, Ginny… I don't." She panicked. "Does this mean—but—how real does he look?"
Tom was silent, watching the reactions with amusement.
Breath. Breath in. Breath out.
"He's—he's right over there." Ginny pointed.
But there was nothing there, Hermione frowned. Oh crap.
"Let me get a nurse."
Ginny nearly cursed. "I am a nurse here! And you can't tell anyone about this!" She didn't want to be locked up in St. Mungo's and treated like a specimen again.
Never that, please.
Hermione was at a loss of what to do. "If I can't find anything about…this, then you will hear from the nurses here." She gave in.
"All right."
xxx
"Dear Ginny,
Don't think I forgot about that date you promised me. How does Giovanni's at 7 sound? Let's say, next Saturday? I'll be looking forward to your reply.
Love,
Haden."
Ginny put the letter down on her counter. She hurriedly scribbled a confirmation letter and sent it out with Vulcan. Ever since she apparated home, Tom just sat on the couch (her couch!) languidly and rested. Do memories even rest? She stood in her kitchen, having ignored him for the last few minutes.
"Just tell me why you're here." Ginny hissed, walking into the living room and glaring at his calm expression.
"I don't see a point in not telling you." Tom raised an eyebrow, infuriating the redhead even more. "One moment I was suffering in the diary, and next I'm here." He admitted grudgingly.
Wait. Did that mean he didn't know either?
"How… how real are you?" She gulped. He had been pretty real in the Chamber.
Tom got up, his face in a smirk as he walked over to Ginny. She took a few steps back. His eyes held a mischievous glint as he advanced.
"Get away from me!"
He grabbed her wrist, holding it painfully. Ginny gave a yelp; it was surely going to bruise.
"I'm very real, when it comes to you." His smirk widened. "But, apparently, not for anything else." He let go of her wrist, and walked through the couch in demonstration. He turned to look at her, and suddenly, he disappeared.
Damn Tom. He always had to make a grand entrance and a grand exit.
She looked around for him. Hello, she thought, are you there?
No answer.
At least he was out of her head. Ginny sighed. Why didn't the potion work? I better wait for Hermione to tell me that.
Hours later, Ginny was sprawled on her bed, sleeping soundly. No nightmares tormented her, no monsters of the dark made her groan and whimper. Not tonight.
Tom sat on her windowsill, looking out at London's night. His skin glowed as the moonlight hit it, and passed through it. Was he a ghost? How much of him was real?
Could he ever be real?
He honestly didn't know what was going on, much to his displeasure. One moment he thought he was dying (if a memory can die), and then next thing he knew, he had heard Ginny in his thoughts. Her thoughts were the only thing in the darkness that he could hear. It was a really horrible feeling—to feel like one was surrounded by a black nothingness. It gave doubts on whether or not one existed. Then, suddenly, voices here and there. Slowly, he began to see what she saw, to hear what she heard. He began to listen to what she thought.
Sometimes he wished his thoughts were that mundane and innocent. She usually mused about things from how horrible the nurses outfit looked, how much her ankles hurt from walking on them all the time, to what dinner should consist of.
He turned his gaze towards her figure. Her red hair cascaded across her back. It was quite long now, not like it had been then. It met midway across her back in soft curls, and had taken on a weird shade of scarlet. Her pale face seemed to shine in the moonlight. She was weakening by the day, and he knew it. Very few things escaped his knowledge. His rise and her downfall were always correlated.
'Dear Tom,
Today—you have to hear about today—it's the happiest day of my life! Harry Potter told me I was sweet! I can't believe it! He actually noticed me. Oh Tom, I wish you could feel how happy I am right now. It's amazing. I gave him a small flower, and he blushed, and called me sweet! I have to go, my teacher is looking at me weirdly.
Love,
Ginny'
He was so fond of her back then. She poured her heart out to him and trusted him in a way no one else ever had. Yes, she was a pawn for him to use, but she was one of the more noteworthy of pawns. At one point—he had deluded himself into thinking of her as a friend. He almost thought she cared.
She had been so innocent, so caring. She would come to him, writing frantically, crying about how her brothers ignored her or writing joyfully about how Harry Potter smiled at her.
She was no longer the small child that she was back then. Her figure had definitely grown, he mused. But he really could care less for her now. He had fell in love with her innocence. Since he loved it so much, he took it from her. Now, she was again just a mere tool.
Was her soul feeding into his? Did he even have a soul?
He had felt bad when he knew he was killing her, the younger her, but now he didn't feel any remorse. Seeing her grow just reminded him how susceptible to time she was. She was not eternal like he was—she was so…mortal.
Then again, at least she was real. At least the universe recognized her existence.
He frowned. He had rummaged through her memories quite effortlessly and found out many of the things he needed to know. So Voldemort, his older self, was defeated. How…dreary.
He paused, thinking back on the potion that the mudblood had given Ginny. It was supposed to work. The color of the potion, the texture… it was made perfectly, even if he hated to admit that mudbloods could do something right. The only reason for it not to have worked was…
He contemplated whether or not to keep his mouth shut. She couldn't do anything to prevent it either way.
He closed his eyes, and disappeared.
A/N: Tom writes his own dialogue, I swear. And the characters seem to write their own plot, for some reason. So uh oh, Tom can only physically touch Ginny. But why? *Glee*
And also, thanks SO much for the reviews! And I'm going off Canon mostly, but I just didn't want to kill off Fred. So, in this story, Fred never died, k? The twins are still together. Tonks, Remus, yes, they're dead. I'm sorry. =( And yes, those three children –are- the children of Bill and Fleur, according to the books. I did my research *-*
Also, I have a betaaaaa! Jonn Wood is my beta, and it's thanks to him that my grammar errors are going to be killed by a red pen! (It's amazing x-x Thank him for the story flowing better!)
The Creatress: Thanks! I read your GinnyxTom story as well so I was like, jaw dropping when you reviewed. I love your dialogue between Ginny and Tom. And thanks, but like I said, they write their own dialogue :( I never plan it. It just happens. I'm still in confusion about what Tom's personality is like, in my story. X_X
Chocolistic: Poor Ginny, yes yes. I have a lot in store!~
SlytherinPrinzessin: KEKEKE. That's for you to find out! I'm actually not too sure, swt. There are so many scenarios that I've mapped out, I guess I'll chose when time comes.
Review! See how fast I update when people review? *-*