Difficulties of Avoidance
by dead2self
A/N: This one was a bit hard to write, but in the end there's some bits I'm really really pleased with. Enjoy!
With new lines drawn on the battlefield, Ginny and Tom took their positions and threw themselves once more into the fight. Ginny was determined to get food only when Tom was sleeping or inattentive, but that turned out to be impossible. He watched her like a hawk and watched for the portrait like a man possessed.
The first time the painting appeared again, Ginny's heart raced into overdrive. Tom stood before it, ready, but the painting did not open. The food simply appeared on the floor beneath it.
This time he did not slash out with any spells, he simply spoke to the girl. He used honeyed words, cautious and kind, but the oddest thing happened. He had hardly begun to explain that they were trapped when the girl wrinkled her nose and shrunk back into the background of the painting, shaking her head. Tom was left speechless as the girl looked wide-eyed and wild at Ginny, and then fled once more.
Ginny suspected immediately she knew who the girl was. She had not read Rita Skeeter's book, but it had been impossible not to overhear the gist. This must be Dumbledore's sister, Ariana, who had gone a bit mad and been killed in a duel. Plus the carafes of water that came with her meals had the unmistakable odor of the Hog's Head, not easily forgotten. Riddle all but confirmed her theory when, the next time she took her meal, he cast spells that detected a person on the other side of the painting, but shouted himself hoarse to no avail.
It seemed there was another passageway out of Hogwarts, one that even the Marauder's Map had missed. Which was infuriating, because with the blasted tether around her ankle, this incredible new development was next to useless. She contented herself with at least having an advantage of knowledge on Tom, and fell back into the habit of constant Occlumency.
Despite what he had said, Tom had been downright civil since their agreement, at least compared to her pre-starvation treatment. In truth, the Exploding Snap deck was the real hero of the hour. Riddle had taken to playing a complex solitaire version of the game, and as such they could pass hours without interacting at all. But when they did, something had changed. True to his word, he was not kind. Neither did he ignore her; rather he followed her every cough and movement. He simply did not lash out at her in his frustration.
Her initial plan to withhold meals from Tom failed rather spectacularly. She had promised to ensure Tom one meal a day plus water, but had made no stipulations about his taking food. Their first meal she snatched up her plate and ground the heel of her shoe into his, but Tom simply Summoned the full plate away from her and left the soiled food for her. She attempted to eat while he slept, but Tom rigged an alarm spell that woke him up when the food arrived. She was no match for magic, and he had no intention to go hungry.
Regarding their deal, Tom informed her that if she ever presented him with his ensured meal without showing both plates full, he would curse her with a Vomiting Jinx to see if the contents matched. That inadvertently led to them eating at least one meal together during the day, as Ginny had to set both plates on the small table for inspection and wait to eat until Tom finished trying to open the portrait before it disappeared. His unfinished solitaire game was waiting there, and Ginny worked on it while she waited. Whether she messed it up or saw something he missed, it irked him either way. When they finally began eating, their focus was usually on finding the next move before the other.
In the end, Ginny started giving him the second plate of their other meals with little ceremony. Except to steal his dessert, which Tom rolled his eyes at unless it was rice pudding, in which case he took both.
After giving her a thorough magical check-over, Tom proposed a regime of potions for her, citing concern for her health. Initially, he suggested she request the Room for them as she had before, but it did not work. Tom was unsurprised.
"The average potions cabinet has anti-Summoning charms on it if locked properly," he told her. "I suspect the matron has tired of her potions disappearing."
Ginny thought it more likely that the Carrows had begun locking it themselves after Madam Pomfrey sent Ginny off with half her stock.
Whatever the reason, Tom took to brewing the potions, a process she obliged with such prejudice that he did not have much hope for subterfuge. He gave her a list of ingredients that was innocuous enough, and the Room retrieved them with ease. He did make her a Wiggenweld Potion and an Invigoration Draught to start, but the third she recognized immediately.
"Oh gross, Tom." Having sniffed it, she held the vial Riddle handed her at arm's length. He watched with a laughable air of innocence.
"You think you could do better?"
"At making a Restorative Draught? Certainly, since this is a love potion."
Tom's mask dropped. He scowled as he snatched it back, dumped it into the cauldron, and Vanished the whole batch. "How in Merlin's name can you recognize a Cupid's Bow Concoction? This is 16th century frivolity. No one's brewed it in ages."
"I don't know about any Cupid's Bow, but Fred and George have one like that. Mum started throwing out their stock when they were first experimenting, so my room was the back-up warehouse for all their merchandise."
He turned to their stock of potions ingredients, carefully hoarded under his bed once Ginny had provided them, and seized a handful of Gurdyroot to begin slicing. "Are you hiding a batch of Felix Felicis? Of all the obscure love potions throughout history, I chose the one your idiot brothers fooled around with?"
"Oh, no. If it's been brewed in the last five hundred years, it's probably been in my bedroom. I breathed in so many fumes, I spent half the summer pining after the Muggle boy who kept getting lost near our house." The poor thing liked biking in the countryside, and all the charms on the house meant he spent large chunks of time sat just beyond the barrier of their wards looking confused.
As she watched the sure and steady rhythm of the knife in Riddle's hand, her skin crawled at the thought of feeling even a fraction of that giddy puppy-love for him.
"I don't know what you hoped to accomplish," she said with proper smugness. "That one just makes you silly."
"I couldn't very well get away with Amortentia. Your N.E.W.T.s tutor was highly effective." Ginny swallowed the smile that threatened. Fair enough. She had never seen such perfect, paper-thin slices of Gurdyroot in her life.
"What are you making now?"
"Something for myself."
Ginny eyed him warily, all too aware that there were certain tinctures that when applied to your person made you irresistibly charismatic to the touch. She would have to keep an eye out. That did remind her that some potions did not require heat, adding tinctures to her considerations for poisoning Riddle.
Surprisingly freed from torment and thwarted in one plan, Ginny had turned her efforts towards finding a suitable poison. She had a bits of cheese stashed about the room developing mold, but asking the Room to retrieve a potion would be the safer bet. They had bottled Draught of Living Death in one of Slughorn's lessons that year, so presumably it was still in the castle. Despite feeling very much that she needed it, it had not appeared.
Ginny figured this was either because they were – as Tom had helpfully pointed out – locked in a proper potions cabinet, or because the Room had safeguards against causing harm to its inhabitants. Luckily, those safeguards were not foolproof. While the fire had not touched Tom, it had destroyed all his food. She just needed to find a reason to ask for a poison that had nothing to do with Tom, or better yet think of a potion that could incapacitate him without harming him.
"Actually, turn out your pockets."
"What, why?"
"Because you may have absconded with any variety of potions ingredients and I'm beginning to think you're not as hopeless as your essays led me to believe."
Grumbling, Ginny turned out her pockets. This was the oddest effect of their new arrangement. She could have refused, fought him tooth and nail until he cursed her and took what he wanted by force, but she did not. They had made no further deals; lashing out just no longer felt like her only option for resisting him. This was a challenge she could rise to – the game was not just to win, but to get away with cheating.
Tom set down his knife and began inspecting the contents of her pockets, a piece of cheese, the D.A. coin, a crumpled Pepper Imp wrapper, and a bobby pin that she had not known she had. Ginny swiped a few slivers of Gurdyroot while he sniffed at the wrapper.
"Why do you have this?" he asked.
"I don't know; it's probably been in my pocket since the Hogwarts Express."
He asked the same of the cheese and the bobby pin ("A snack and good common sense"), and then narrowed his eyes at her.
"Bloody hell, Riddle," she said, pulling her pockets inside out. The Gurdyroot was still cupped in the palm of her hand. This satisfied him, though he did not look happy about it. Huffing, he Vanished her trash, took up the knife and rolled up his sleeves to resume chopping.
Disgruntled, she righted her pockets, hiding the Gurdyroot there. Then she held out her palm, blocking Tom's view of his work.
"I want my coin back."
"Holding it won't make anyone write you. They're scared off."
"Guess you're not as persuasive as you think," she smirked. Points to the Weasley twins.
Tom sighed and handed her the coin, and as it dropped into her palm, any sense of accomplishment drained out of her. With his sleeves rolled back, she caught a glimpse of the shiny patch of skin on his left arm. The remnants of his Dark Mark.
The realization rolled through her like a shockwave. Tom did have a means to communicate with the Dark Lord, any time he wanted. Hermione had gotten the idea for the D.A. coins from the Death Eaters, and Tom had already shown her it was possible to create new connections without the original coin. All he needed to do to escape was recreate his mark.
Straight after that first, flooring, horrible thought, an aftershock rolled in. Why had he not?
It seemed impossible for him to have overlooked, and yet even more improbable that he had not used it. Had Dumbledore done something when he burned off the mark that kept Riddle from recreating it?
Ginny turned quickly, retreating to her hammock with the D.A coin gripped so tightly that last message would imprint on her palm. Bloody hell! So much for feeling smug. Ginny had never felt so slow in her life. Shock and starvation only excused her for the first week of her captivity, but she had thought to grow mold in her pocket before considering Tom's most obvious way out of the Room.
That they were still captive only meant there was something else she was missing.
"Why have you gone quiet?"
Ginny jumped nearly out of her skin. "Blimey, Riddle, leave me to my unpleasant thoughts. Not all of us are constantly scheming."
"Give me that coin back."
"I appreciate the confidence that I could pull off wandless magic in under a week, but you're going to be disappointed. If you must know, I'm disgusted about the potion."
He rolled his eyes. He roll"I only needed you amenable to helping me trick the room. It's little different from manipulating your emotions with words."
The dismissive gesture distracted Ginny enough from her realization that she then didfeel new disgust for the love potion. "What a load of bullshit. You know your charm is lost on me, so now you have to resort to magic."
Riddle turned to stare her down. "So you say, but every time you moderately impress me, you feel accomplished. You are not as immune as you think."
A sick feeling crawled in Ginny's chest, because that rang true. She pushed back against it. "Immune enough you brewed a potion."
"And immune enough you recognized it. Well done, Ginevra, what prowess."
Ginny scowled at him, feeling her heart particularly traitorous. Blast it all, it felt good to hear him say it even though he was only making a point.
"It was not long-lasting, I assure you," he said, turning back to his work. "I don't think I could have stomached it."
Ginny felt a hot surge of anger. He would not have been the one to feel the false affection had he succeeded. Flashing a rude gesture, she retreated. Blessedly this time, he left her alone.
It took everything in her not to stare at his arm after that, as her mind spun into overdrive. What could be keeping Tom from using his mark? Had he tried and been unsuccessful? It was entirely possible that Dumbledore had done something to block him, but Tom was not one to stop in the face of obstacles. He had pushed the boundaries of magic to the point of splitting his soul. If he wanted to recreate his mark, he would be experimenting, straining, single-mindedly pressing his will onto the world.
And yet he was not trying at all. He was brewing potions and occasionally charming a mute painting.
The stunning conclusion that Ginny reached was that he was choosing not to use it. It was either that or he had not thought of it at all, which was the more impossible of the two possibilities. As she grappled with this absurd thought, a vague memory floated back to her from the haze of their near-death experience: Riddle bent over his Dark Mark, shaking. What had that been? A failed attempt to use his mark, or a choice to forgo the easy way out?
Small, foreign, traitorous, a pinprick of curiosity bloomed in her chest. Her heart was not fertile soil, blackened against Riddle and hard, but she could not ignore the niggling thought that Tom Riddle had faced down starvation to avoid calling upon his older self.
The more she shoved it down, the more reasons she found to feed it. Why had he waited on brewing Polyjuice Potion to stage his escape? His wandless magic had already achieved a Disillusionment Charm satisfactory enough to escape the castle unnoticed. Was he simply so twisted that he had waited for the end of term in order to enact a plan of perfect revenge – slaughtering her family with her own hand? But still why the Polyjuice Potion, when he could have used an Imperius on her? He had been confident in his ability to control her until she started thwarting him.
No, Polyjuice Potion was the most foolproof way to appear to be someone else, resistant to charms and wards and detection, as long as one had a constant supply. Creepingly, Ginny hazarded the thought that it was not her family he had intended to fool.
All too aware that she had gone silent, Ginny flung herself out of the hammock and slumped to the bookshelf. If she sat too long with her thoughts, Tom would use Legilimency, and her sleight of hand worked less well when he was looking for it. She had been raiding the Hogwarts library for books on Quidditch, but reading now would be impossible. Her thoughts were buzzing beneath her skin like she had Pumpkin Fizz running through her veins.
As she paged blindly through a copy of The Beater's Bible she took advantage of Tom bending over the cauldron to stash the Gurdyroot slices on page 46. Between her other hiding places, she nearly had enough ingredients to make the world's smallest dose of Bloodroot Potion, but it could not be further from her mind.
When Tom interrupted her, it was almost welcome.
"I'll need more dittany."
Pulling her wits about her, she came over and noted his neat pile of chopped dittany with her eyebrow raised.
"You still have some," she said. "Whatever you're making now isn't for me. Why should I get you more ingredients when you're wasting what you already have on someone I hate?"
Riddle did not bother to hide his smile, stepping back from the cauldron. "Might I interest you in a dose of Edurus Potion?"
That piqued Ginny's interest. They had used it once in class when cutting up Venomous Tentacula roots, which produced a highly acidic secretion. The Edurus Potion turned the skin on one's hands tough and grey, basically impervious, at least until the gray cast flaked off a few minutes later. If she wanted to make a poisonous tincture without a cauldron, that would certainly come in handy.
"More than one, and we can talk."
"You may have half. Go get the Potions Manual."
Ginny retrieved the book from his bedside table. "If you take a dose in front of me, and then let me bottle all of it and choose my portion, then yes. Are you actually going to make a Restorative Draught next?"
"When I have more dittany. And Bubotubers."
Ginny took stock of the remaining ingredients under his bed, and then began to scour the book for potentially dangerous potions he could make with what they had. She had done this at the beginning, but it was starting to feel a pointless exercise. He clearly had a more extensive knowledge of potions than their seventh year textbook. Tom started adding the dittany to the cauldron, an overconfident gesture, but he knew her thoughts. Ginny shut the manual with a sigh, resigning herself to reacting to whatever Tom came up with rather than preventing it.
Riddle finished seven careful stirs with a swift slash through the middle of the cauldron. The potion went from thundercloud gray to slate blue, and he stepped back, pushing his hair out of his face. He Conjured a vial, dipped it in the potion, and downed it in one smooth motion. The reaction started from the tips of his fingers, running grey veins down his arms like rivulets of water, stopping just past his elbow. Ginny's brows shot up. The doses they had taken in class only protected up past her wrist.
"Satisfied?" he asked.
"Satisfactory," she answered, waiting for him to conjure more vials before focusing on the required ingredients. While Tom moved the ingredients into his stockpile, she took over bottling, carefully inspecting each vial for imperfections. She then tucked her half of the stock into her robes, sloppily repaired with a needle and thread that Tom had confiscated soon after.
Tom took to squeezing Bubotuber pus, a promising start as it actually featured in the Restorative Draught, and then Scorgified the cauldron once Ginny finished her work. "Aren't you hungry yet?" he asked, glancing up where the portrait would appear. He had positioned his work station immediately under it.
"No, I've got to work up an appetite stealing potions ingredients from under your nose," she answered. She should have moved away then, left him to his work and occupied her mind with her escape. But she remained rooted beside him, her stomach turning over on itself, beating back her intrusive thoughts. Silence burned between them as she stood there, undecided.
"Looming is not stealing ingredients," he said, glaring. "Must you always be obnoxious?"
"Why haven't you used your mark?" she asked, shocking herself. The words tumbled from her mouth unplanned, and she could not take them back. She was not the only one surprised; Tom flinched. She would not have seen it except that he nearly sliced his finger.
"Took you long enough," he said woodenly, resuming his work. "If it worked, I would use it. Obviously."
Ginny frowned. He was lying, and badly, and that only bolstered her suspicions. He held himself tense, and she tried to weigh her next words carefully.
"It is not what you are thinking," Tom said before she could speak.
"What am I thinking?" she asked.
His lip curled. "That you've succeeded."
"Not much, if you're just planning to usurp your rightful place as the Dark Lord."
There, she had said it. It was impossible, but she had said it out loud.
"I know you could have gotten out while we were starving," she continued. "I thought it was a dream, but I saw you. You chose not to summon him."
She felt as though a weight had lifted off her chest, and she waited, through a longer silence, for Tom to deny it and set all things to rights.
"I need not justify myself to you. You're insufferable as it is."
Her soul may well have left her body. "Bloody hell!" she breathed, and Tom went rigid.
"Mark me, Weasley, I will not speak to you of this. Leave it be."
"Bloody hell!" she repeated, taking a step back. It was unthinkable. Tom Riddle had listened to her. For months he had insisted that she was a fool, that he and his older self were the same person with the same goals, and now he wanted to replace himself? It was what she had argued all these months.
"Be silent, or I will make you be silent," he said, driving the knife into the cutting board.
His tone stilled her tongue, ready to eviscerate him with history's most satisfying I-told-you-so, and Ginny really looked at him. His hackles were up, nerves on edge and his jaw locked tight. She had every right to gloat, wanted him to feel every ounce of the shame that was apparent in his posture. But a small part of her knew that if Luna were here, she would advise mercy. He was exposed and defensive as he had never been before.
This was no change of heart, but even if it would do nothing, she ought to treat with care the one time Tom Riddle changed his mind.
With monumental effort, she simply said, "Fine." Then, because Riddle regarded at her with the utmost suspicion, she added, "But if I don't get to gloat, then you owe me."
"Fine," he bit out.
"I will make you pay," she said, dead serious. She had just exercised such self-control that Riddle should be kissing the hem of her robes.
Riddle scraped the bubotuber pus into the cauldron with finality in every line of his body. "I said fine."
Still shellshocked, Ginny backed off and began thinking about lunch. She needed something in her stomach to process what had just happened. Ariana's portrait shimmered into its place on the wall, but it usually took about fifteen minutes from the moment Ginny needed food until when it was ready. Ariana always left the portrait and came back before the plates would appear.
Her head was brimming with questions left unsaid. What had changed his mind? Clearly their conversations figured in the equation, or he would not have been so mortified. More importantly, how in the world did Tom plan to replace Voldemort at the head of his own army, alone? It was folly of the highest degree.
Tom truly seemed to be making a Restorative Draught, but Ginny kept an eye on him nonetheless. He was just passed adding the Ashwinder eggs when their lunch arrived. Ginny thanked the portrait as always, and started towards the table with their plates, when she noticed a rubber stopper roll across the floor.
She spun to see Tom pulling his jumper over his head, his arms silver-grey up to his elbows. He dipped the sleeve straight in the unfinished potion, and proceeded to smear it along the seam where the portrait met the wall. The stone began to pucker and steam, eroding under the portrait's edge.
Ariana reeled away from the frame with a gasp, and Ginny's heart stopped, but she was moving before she could think. Their plates clattered to the floor as she lunged for the cauldron, heaving it with all her might. The cauldron seared red where she touched it and she dropped it with a shriek, but she still managed to fling half the contents at him. Tom cried out and threw a hand towards her, a whiplash fast Shield Charm forming in front of him, but some of the potion splashed around it. He howled as the droplets burned into his skin, whisps of purple smoke rising off him.
As Tom stumbled to the stock of potions ingredients under his bed, Ginny rushed to unstopper one of her vials of Edurus Potion. Downing it, she seized the scalding cauldron once more as the effects of the potion snaked up her arms. She emptied the remaining contents over the tether. Some splashed across her ankle, but the tether dissolved in an instant. Hissing through the pain, Ginny seized the edge of the frame and pulled with all her strength.
Open! she begged, but then her movements turns sluggish – an Impediment Jinx – and Tom was beside her. As he pushed her to the floor, her plea turned to keeping him in, and she was hopeful to see that Ariana had already fled the painting. Tom put his shoulder behind the frame and pushed with his whole weight, but when the portrait pulled away from the wall, there was no passageway there.
He rounded on her, teeth bared, and she could do nothing to get away from him, moving painfully slow.
"Are you insane?" he snapped. "You'll lose a foot."
Only then did she see that the purple-grey lesion on her ankle was sizzling, growing, eating its way around to the back of her calf. Her heart leapt into her throat, but Tom bent over her, scraping a grey sludge off his forearm and smearing it liberally across the burn. It smelled like death, but he had it across his face as well, and her ankle stopped smoking.
He left her there as he went to replace her tether, and then finally released her from the jinx. Ginny collapsed back on the floor, her breath freed to come fast and short. Riddle's jumper was in half-melted ruin under the vanishing painting, and there was an odd hole in the floor where she had poured out the cauldron, like the fossilized remains of a splash pattern.
"I'm not getting you any more potions ingredients," she seethed.
"I'll make do," he snarled back, removing whatever curse he had placed on the cauldron and setting it upright with a clang. He stared down at it, and then, inexplicably, he ran a hand over his face and laughed.
"Bloody hell. A Flagrante Curse wasn't enough, I needed to stick it to the floor."
"Yeah, you have no one to blame but yourself," she answered dryly. She groaned, sitting up, and examined her ankle. "What is this?"
"I just smeared together a salve of ingredients that would counteract the reactivity of the unfinished potion. There's no set recipe, but any potions master who wants to live a long life can make something like this."
Impressive, she thought as she twisted her ankle around. It still stung, but it was nothing next to the burns on her hands. The grey stone cast was still there, but they hurt like hell.
"Will you heal my hands?"
"Not before lunch," he answered, stooping to examine the food strewn across the floor. Most of it was clearly melted, but two drumsticks and a baked potato had flown clear of the wreckage. He split the potato in half and dropped it in front of her with the chicken, a cruel grin on his face. The effects of the potion were wearing off, revealing her blistered, raw palms. He clearly wanted her to waste another vial of potion in order to eat. Ginny grinned back at him and laid on the floor to gnaw at the drumstick with absolutely no semblance of dignity. This earned her another laugh, though somewhat mean-spirited.
She thought he would retreat to the bed to eat his portion with a book, but instead he sat next to her on the floor. "I am no different," he said after a moment, resolute, if not a bit stiff. "I want what I've always wanted."
"That's obvious," she answered. Once more, she pushed back against her instinct to relish in being right. What she wanted to say was, "That's obvious, why do you think I railed on about you being second best?"
Tom seemed to read this in her features and ground his jaw harder. "I would have recreated the Mark before I allowed myself to die."
"You can't be mad at me for what I'm not saying," she huffed. "I should be crowing from the rooftops, but I'm not. I'd say some gratitude is in order."
Tom's frown deepened, but he said, "Fine, give me your hands."
Sitting up, Ginny offered up her palms. Tom passed the wand over them a few times until all the blisters and burns were gone, and then picked up her drumstick, taking a bite out of it before handing it to her.
"You don't get to choose how to pay me back," she said sullenly. "That's not how this works."
"Eat your lunch, Weasley. I'll pay you back however I want."
A/N: Baaahhhh I need to know, did you see it coming? Because I don't even think Tom saw it coming and he lived it! ahaha