Chapter Five: A Nameless Terrible Thing
Amy and the Doctor followed Ginny into the cavernous space. The door closed behind them and they walked out into the long slender room lined with torches and pillows. The entire area was bathed in greenish light and the air was laden with dust that filtered down through the torchlight.
Ginny slapped her hands to her hips and turned back to face the pair. "Well what do you think?" she asked.
The Doctor was looking around at the high ceilings; he ran his hand along the engraved wooden wall and nodded. "Simply splendid, what did you call it again?"
"The Room of Requirement," Ginny said. "This actually isn't how it looks, it looks however you want it to," she added.
"It looks however you want it to?" Amy said. "How does that work?"
Holding up the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor scanned the air. While he was reading the results, he turned slowly to gleam more areas of the room. "The room is psychic, right?" he asked.
Ginny nodded. "Something like that, the room just gets an idea what the person using it desires and it shapes itself to be that way—right now it's taking this shape from my head. This is what it looked like when Harry used to lead the meetings for the DA here," Ginny said lowering her head, she was looking toward a stack of pillows that she could remember knocking Harry back into with a hex that was a bit too powerful. He'd laughed and shaken it off. She hadn't stopped thinking about Harry since she arrived in this time, what the Doctor said had dredged up feelings she thought she was done with.
Amy glanced to the Doctor and then turned back to Ginny. "You used to have Deviant Art meetings here?" Ginny asked.
"What's Deviant Art?" Ginny asked.
"And you're from the early 1990s—so no internet—right," Amy pointed at her, slapping her hands to her legs and turning away in embarrassment.
Shaking her head slightly, Ginny stepped closer to the center of the room and came to a stop. "DA stands for Dumbledore's Army—I came up with the name—we were trying to rebel against strict standards that the Ministry put on us while trying to silence Harry," she said. "I wouldn't believe today if it wasn't for his teaching," she added.
"Is it okay that I have no idea what you're talking about?" said Amy.
"It's all very complex—" Ginny started.
"And it's got to do with the future so the less we know, the better," the Doctor said to Amy sternly. He turned back to Ginny. "Now what did you bring us here to tell us?"
Ginny let out a breath that it seemed she had been holding a long time. "The man who destroys my whole world and kills Harry mother and father is here, in this time as a young boy…" she paused.
"Before you go any further, we can't alter set events, we can't even entertain the thought of it," said the Doctor holding out his finger. "It's not up for discussion," he said.
"You don't understand," Ginny screamed. "He ruins the world, he ruins everything and if he gets his way no one will be able to stop him. He'll enslave the Muggles and he'll kill Harry and my friends…this isn't just some whim, I've seen part of it!"
"Even if he wins, these events have to come to pass, they're set events," the Doctor said.
Ginny folded her arms and turned away from him. "Just because you say so?" she asked.
"Yes," the Doctor replied. "And because I can tell what is where it needs to be," he said. "There is something here that needs to be stopped, but it's not some wizard who's going bad—it's far more sinister."
"Nothing is more sinister, you think just because it won't happen to you it's not important. You'll take me back home and hop in your little blue box and I won't matter—my friends won't matter! Not to you!" Ginny didn't know why she was so mad.
The Doctor grabbed Ginny at the shoulder and pushed her back against one of the large columns that ran along the edge of the room. "I watched my people die by the millions in a war that raged across the whole of time. I watched all of reality burst at the seams and stopped it. I have saved this world, this entire universe countless times and if there's one thing I know for sure that your little crisis, despite its effect on the Wizarding World will not be the end of time. It's meant happen—it's got to be," the Doctor said staring right into her eyes.
Amy grabbed the Doctor by the chest and drew him away from Ginny. "Calm down, both of you," she said.
"If you kill this boy, if you change the future—it will end in a catastrophe," said the Doctor staring at Ginny. "Trust me, I've been this route before—I have lost friends, I've had family and loved ones die," the Doctor said.
There were tears rolling over Ginny's round cheeks. "Then you can't change anything, why are you doing it?"
"Because it's what I do. Because I'm the only one who can do it," the Doctor said. "Maybe I can't change everything, but I can change the things that actually shouldn't be," the Doctor said, his tone becoming softer. He released her arm and paced back to the center of the room. "What you're trying to do is admirable, but it could ruin the whole of time. Someone worse could come in place of this tyrant or something else. I know it seems dark now, but I've seen the future and there's a world without this wizard you're talking about. And you're still in it, so if there's something you don't lose—don't lose faith that you're going to survive this," said the Doctor.
Ginny stared at him as if she were looking at him for the first time. The Doctor walked over to one of the pillows and sat down. Amy was standing off to the side of the room looking between both of them. "What's out there? What did you see?" Ginny asked.
"Everything. I made the whole of time and space my backyard," said the Doctor. "Problem with that is that when you do it, you lose perspective. That's what happened to my people, they started looking at all of reality as theirs and theirs alone and they started a war that nearly tore all of history apart—its why I had to stop them…"
The fragments were piecing themselves together in Ginny's head and she realized what he meant. It was horrifying that the Doctor could really be this person, be all of these things at once. That he could be such a power and show such restraint and such wisdom. Amy's gaze and seemed to reinforce her thoughts.
"There was a goblin, or a trickster or a warrior, a nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos, nothing could stop it or hold it or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world..." the Doctor spoke the words so quietly that Ginny almost believed that she had dreamed them.
"It's going to be hard," Ginny said. "You don't know what he's done to the world," she added quietly.
"You'll manage," said the Doctor. "You have to," he said heading for the door of the room with his hands dipped into his pockets.
"Why was I picked to come back here, why was I the one you needed?" asked Ginny.
"I'm not sure yet," he said.
"Well I want out, I want to go back—you told me I could," Ginny said.
The Doctor froze and Amy spoke before he could. "The TARDIS has locked itself down, we can't get inside of it for some reason," she said.
"So we're trapped?" asked Ginny. "We're trapped in the bloody 40s while there's a war going on," she said.
"We won't be trapped, we just solve the thing and the TARDIS lets us in, then we take you home," the Doctor said.
"We still have nary an idea what we're dealing with," Amy said.
Ginny picked herself up off the column. "Maybe the thing we're looking for is more simplistic than we think…don't you have any equipment to search for things and help us?" asked Ginny.
"It's all in the TARDIS," the Doctor said.
"Maybe Amy and I could check through the library for something on time magic and detection of time traveling beings?" Ginny said. "There's got to be something…"
"Worth a try," Amy said.
"Then that's where we'll start," the Doctor said. "See Ginny—I just knew you had to be here for some reason, I'd never have a chance at doing what you're talking about alone."
"Yeah, I guess," Ginny said with a nod. She still couldn't wrap her head around the idea that killing Tom Riddle might not be the right thing to do, but at the same time it was more than that. She had let Riddle inside of her head all those years ago and all of the things he'd done hadn't been pretty. Some of them had been downright despicable.
"You go on, I'll walk Ginny back so she won't get in trouble," said Amy.
They walked back together and the whole way Amy tried to coax conversation out of Ginny, but it was no use. The thoughts still roamed around inside of her, thoughts of Riddle and the imaginary world he'd pulled her into with his journal. She didn't tell Harry or Ron, or Hermione or even her mother the whole story.
Tom Riddle wasn't a physical being, but he didn't have to be when he had her hands and control of her mind. He'd defiled her, toyed with her and in truth the shame of what he did drove her more than his murdering Myrtle or Harry's parents or a large portion of the rest of the Wizarding World.
In her bed that night she mulled over the thoughts as the other Slytherin girls slept. It was quiet except for the wind rustling past the castle and in the trees outside. She drifted into a sleep tormented by nightmares of Riddle and his seduction, how he used her as a toy and a weapon…
…And when she awoke in the morning, she still wanted Tom Riddle dead.