Gorgons Wake

Gorgons Wake

The chamber that they had placed him in was brightly illuminated with thousands of red candles dripping red wax like blood.  All else was white—floors of smooth white stone, walls the same; the ceiling stretched before his eyes like a white canvas.  Nothing marred the walls by way of decoration.  There was no furniture.  Nothing.  Only the candles, the boy bound in their center, and fear. Trying not to concentrate on the rhythm of his breathing, Harry Potter forced himself to lay still.  Wax had dripped onto his forehead, and he tried to ignore the burn.  He needed to ignore everything.  Beyond all hope, Harry had to force himself to sleep. 

Please, please Ginny.  Stay with me.

The wax was now running from his forehead to his cheeks, burning a line to his chin in a perverse semblance of tears.

Ginny, stay with me.  They’ll be here soon.

Stay with me.

 

*                       *                       *

Three weeks earlier:

Harry blinked the last bit of sleep from his eyes and stared strangely at the picture of Ginny on the nightstand next to his bed.  Absently, his finger traced the jagged scar on his forehead that did not ache.  The dream…  it was one of those that should have seared pain through the famous lightning bolt shaped reminder—he had had experience with these kinds of things, after all.  But no.  Instead of anything familiar to work with, Harry Potter was left with an odd feeling and a room full of ghosts.

He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes, trying to chase away any residue of the tortured sleep.  Failing, he lay back, stared at the ceiling, and thought of her.

In his dream, she had kept changing.

 

At first, her hair was loose around her shoulders, and her eyes were their usual deep brown.  Her mouth was pursed, and her nose had a slight tilt to it.  But when she smiled, she started to shift…  Seemingly, she was thousands of faces—and yet she was still the same… 

She was perched over him, long fingers trailing the bridge of his nose and resting on his lips.  Her now long blond locks tucked behind her ears tickled his cheeks as she kissed his forehead softly.  Demurely. It was like ice and wind, and he shivered in spite of himself.  She nuzzled her head in the crook of his neck, and it was like being home.  Her fingers sifted through his hair, and she was whispering, her voice honeyed.  He cringed at her tone, the words sticking to his skin.  He stared at her, and her voice wrapped itself around him until he couldn't breath.  Her eyes were now a cold blue, fringed in deep, dark lashes. 

"I don't know what you want from me," he said frantically. 

She smiled, rising from her chair at the other end of the table.  "The gorgon is a symbol of the fusion of opposites," she breathed at him.  Her voice kept tuning in and out, and he reached his hand for her to steady herself.

"I don't understand."

"The lion and the eagle.  The bird and the serpent.  Mobility and immobility."  She nipped at his lower lip, softly raking her teeth across it.  Her fingers hooked around his lower back, and she leaned into him, her softness stealing his breath.

"I don't understand," he said when he could finally speak again.

She sat and watched the sea crash onto the rocks and then crash again.  He sat next to her, holding her hand but not looking at her.  He was afraid that if he looked at her, he would just see one more thing crashing.  He didn't need to see her.  Knowing she was there was enough.

"Beauty and horror, Harry.  The gorgon is symbolic of conditions beyond the endurance to the conscious mind, slaying him who contemplates it."

"But it's so beautiful," he said carefully, staring at the waves attacking the shore.

"The gorgon, Harry.  That's why you know I have to go to him."

"I don't understand."

"He's not awake yet.  But he will be soon, you know.  Hopefully he'll notice that he is two instead of one.  He'll be scared.  They never told him.  He's so innocent, really.  Stupid, too.  That will change.  I'm not looking forward to it."

"I don't-"

Her lips silenced his, and the fire of her broke sweat from his forehead.  He brushed away the mass of her flowing hair as it started to bite his cheeks.  Snakes.  She was made of snakes, and she kissed with a forked tongue.

"The gorgon," she hissed.

He pushed her away and roared, suddenly noticing that he had fangs.

The snake woman curled around herself, her face hidden in her hands.  "You realise I'm going to lose you because of this."  She was crying.

That's when Harry realised that he was still lying alone on his bed thinking of her.  Yet, in his mind, the snake woman still sobbed; and he knew who she was, though he still didn't understand why she had come to him like this. He was only sure of two things – that he somehow had to help her, and that there was no way he could.

Wait a minute.

She was a dream, right?  This whole stupid thing was just a bizarre daydream.  He watched her outline dim and then re-surge.  This was crazy.  Where had she even come from?  Why was she still there when he was awake?

"I'm losing you."  Her arms reached for his, the snakes in her hair writhing.  The canyon that separated them started to widen.

"Who are you?" he yelled through cupped hands.

She shouted something back, but her words were lost, as she was thousands of miles away.

Harry opened his eyes and very calmly put on his glasses.  He had not really been asleep, not deeply anyway.  His sleep was deep and dreamless, and it had been since returning "home" after his fourth year.  She couldn't have been real.  The snake woman was not Ginny, and any form of association was ridiculous.  Harry shook his head as if to clear it.  Too much thinking.  Too serious.  Life was serious enough.  Put on your cloak, Harry.  Go to Charms.  Laugh.  Joke.  Be merry, even.  Go to Quidditch practice and fly.  Go be with Ginny.  She's not upset.  You're just imagining things.  You might even be suffering a brain hemorrhage from one too many Snitches to the brain. 

Besides, why would she be upset? 

*                       *                       *

"Oi!  You did hear me ask you to pass the ketchup a dozen times now, didn't you?  Being that I'm sitting right next to you and all?"  Ron waved his hand in front of his friend’s face in an exaggerated manner.

"Huh?" Harry blinked, still deep in reverie.

"Right,” Ron sighed, amused to see that the faraway expression on the other boy’s face had changed in the slightest.  “HAR-RY.  Please... pass...  the ketchup.  My... eggs... implore you.”

Harry stared dumbly at Ron for a bit.  Ron pointed at the bottle of ketchup. 

Harry stared dumbly at the bottle of ketchup for a bit and then stared back at Ron.

"Honestly," Hermione said, irritated.  She leaned across the table to get the ketchup and passed it to Ron.  "Is everything alright at the planet you're on, Harry?  You know, enough oxygen and all?"

"Maybe the little green men are fighting for control of his brain as we speak, Hermione," Ron observed while deftly employing the sought after red bottle.

Hermione stared at Harry, still seemingly light-years away.  She snorted and tried to hide her growing concern in her next carefully chosen words: "Well, it wouldn't be a particularly big battle, then, would it?"

"I heard that," Harry said, still staring into space.

"Well!  He's alive, then.  Er, sorta.  Right.  One way to find out."  Ron unceremoniously jammed the disputed bottle of ketchup down on Harry's left hand.

"Aaarg!”  Harry screamed as he clutched said hand.  "Bastard!  What did you do that for?"

"I had to see if you could still feel pain, Harry.  You might have been turning into a statue with a ridiculous haircut."

Harry flexed his fingers.  "Just you wait, Ron.  You'll never know when it's coming…  But it’s coming—when you sleep... .”

Ron chuckled and scooped up some ketchup-ed eggs into his mouth.  "Please," he said, spraying bits of egg, "I could take you down and still beat Hermione at chess with my free hand—it’s part of the advantage of Lord Ron Vs The Boy Who Was Very Very Short."

"I'll show you Very Very-"

"Alright, children," Hermione scolded, arms crossed.  "Don't make me go all forest troll on you.  You know I'm capable."

The boys paused in their impending row enough to register the look on Hermione's face.  Harry broke first, and his face struggled to contain the laughter threatening to steal his momentum.  Ron saw Harry's discomfort, pointed at Hermione, and made a mock troll face complete with crossed eyes and bared incisors.  Harry matched his face and raised him with a pair of twitchy ears.  Ron snorted and The Showdown Began: Soon the boys were both assaulting each other with an assortment of unusual expressions and laughing until every once in a while a funny noise that sounded oddly like a tweet emerged on top.

Hermione grinned in spite of herself.  She loved it when her boys laughed.  She loved when their faces lost a little bit of that hardness of growing up.  It was still strange to think of them as anything other than the boys she had first met on the train all those years ago, but the truth was they were changing.  They were growing up, and their seriousness – especially Harry's – at times alarmed her.  Hermione sighed and looked over her shoulder in a distracted manner.  So much had changed, really, yet everything looked the same.  Hogwarts still looked the same. 

Teenagers, children really, were laughing at their house tables.  Hermione watched four girls at the Ravenclaw table huddle together conspiratorially, every once in awhile giggling and pointing at some boy just down the table.  Hermione looked at this boy, saw that he had black hair and a grin; and that he obviously knew he was the center of their attention, judging by the way he tossed said black hair and flexed said grin at regular intervals.  Hermione did not even know his name.  He might have been second year at most.  A baby.  Hermione stared back at her plate.  When had she gotten so old?

Harry was watching her.  "You know we were just teasing, Hermione.  You don't really twitch your ears all the time, honest."

Hermione stifled another snort, as too many would lend certain inferential character traits that she would not particularly like to be associated with.  She regarded the boy she had been a best friend with for six years, and then she regarded his stalwart companion—also her closest friend. 

There were four simple ways for the observer to tell Ron Weasley and Harry Potter apart: first, Harry Potter was nearly a head shorter than his six foot four companion—and it really wasn’t that Harry was so short—it was only that his wiry, compact form alongside that of his lanky, long appendaged friend looked short in comparison; second, Ron Weasley had grown himself a prominent, well-structured jaw, which in turn streamlined his face of all baby fat and created interesting hollows under his eyes and cheeks, while Harry Potter still retained his youthful face of delicate features strengthened by age and by the loss of his baby cheeks; third, Ron Weasley sported sun kissed red locks, while Harry Potter was capped with unruly black hair; fourth, Harry Potter had a lightning shaped scar zig-zagging down his forehead, while Ron Weasley had no obvious skin blemishes.  Also, they looked nothing at all alike.     

Both boys commanded presence, but it was Harry that made the more striking figure.  It was something in his personality, maybe—or perhaps it was his eyes…  His eyes were still that brilliant green colour she loved. It was a reassuring color.  Strong.  Natural.  She loved him for his strength.  Since the attack, she had been thinking about him more and more—about how she loved him, about his silly little traits.

When the security and harmony of the wizarding world had been shattered by the attack on the Ministry of Magic, it was Harry that the students had flocked to.  Harry, who had reassured them all with his strength.  Harry, who had faced the Dark Lord and lived.  There was hope.  The threat was real now, and no one could dispute it.  The Ministry was fractured, the organization behind it shattered.  While the Death Eaters were mobilising their forces, the Ministry had fought back by pretending that they hadn't existed.  Now it was too late to prepare.  Minister Fudge, having barely survived the Attack, had come crawling to the Headmaster, pleading for him to take over.

Dumbledore refused, having said that there was more important work to be done than being a figurehead.  Dumbledore had told Fudge to lead, even when Fudge was on his knees, crying that no-one would listen anymore.  He was right, of course.  The panic had been instantaneous.  Wizards and witches pilgrimmaged to Hogsmeade by droves, seeking the protection of Hogwarts and Dumbledore.  The town was packed more full of people than was the great hall on Halloween Feast, people camping out on the streets, even.  Through it all, Harry had been strong.  Harry had gone to visit Hogsmeade to tell the frightened mass that he had faced Voldemort *again* and still lived. 

That day had been surreal.  Hermione remembered being by his side, watching him as he stood before thousands, telling them all resolutely that he still lived and that they would too if they fought.  ‘Could this be the same boy?’ she had asked herself, slightly frightened by his passion. 

The same boy who was still amazed by garden gnomes and sugarquills?  Insanity…  She loved him—not like a woman loves a man, she hastily reminded herself—but like a friend who pledges their life to another, that kind of trust.

She loved him for his faults, too: That he wasn't just some name the crowds whispered.  Harry Potter still occasionally walked into walls when he wasn't looking.  Harry Potter still unconsciously stuck out his tongue when he was diving for the Snitch.  No-one wanted to say anything, they loved that he still did it; it was something familiar, something to hold on to.

Harry Potter was stubborn to the point of exhaustion.  When he couldn't get his potion to bubble orange, he was convinced that the only reason why everyone else's potion bubbled orange was that everyone one else had been packing food colouring up their robes.  Even after Ron had taken his off and thrown it into his own bubbling orange potion, (a revolutionary spot removing formula patented by one Severus Snape, highly applauded by Castle Keeping International) Harry had not wavered.  Ron could have been packing in his shoe the whole time while trying to divert Harry's attention with the robe-throwing tactic.

Hermione's moment of reflection ended when Ginny came running to the breakfast table.

The girl was out of breath, and her robe was hastily thrown over her shoulders, her white collar underneath sticking up at odd angles.  She paused to pant a little hand over heart, and then smiled sheepishly.  "I overslept," she explained, scooting Ron over to slide in next to Harry and hastily kiss her favorite spot on the right side of his jaw.

No-one had been more surprised than Hermione when Harry and Ginny had started dating.  It was so sudden, she thought.  Ginny's long-standing crush on Harry was an idle joke that her brothers chose to exploit every once in a while when the fiery redhead flared her temper.  Harry had best explained it to Hermione this way: One day he woke up and saw that Ginny had a freckle right under her nose.  Since noticing that freckle, he became fascinated by it.  Then, because he was staring at her face so much when he thought she wasn't looking, he noticed not only how beautiful she was, but how her right eye narrowed more than her left when she was verbally lashing one of the twins for slipping a Fizzing Whizbee into her breakfast cereal.  He noticed how electric her hair was zipping through the air as she learned how to ride Ron's broom—laughing with delight, her face lit with the same energy.  Or he noticed how her hand tenderly lingered on her father's forehead after he had come back from the hospital, broken.

Loving Ginny was like finding a place where he belonged.  ‘It was so right’, Hermione thought, ‘how could I ever have been stunned into speechlessness?’  She pushed down the nagging voice in the back of her head that said she was jealous.  She didn't fancy Harry.  Really.  She was just protective.  Right, then.

Coming back to reality, Hermione noticed that Harry was looking so bewilderedly and tenderly at Ginny, that it was like he was staring at a ghost of a loved one suddenly come back to life.  He took her hand.

"Anything the matter, Harry?" she asked in between hurried mouthfuls of biscuits and gravy.  "You look at me like I have three heads with a spotted purple nose on the far left one."

"Harry, you git.  You've given it away!”  Ron stage whispered.

Ginny didn't even slow in eating as she exchanged the fork to her left hand and extended her right arm into a vicious hook that slammed into her brother's shoulder.

"Ow!”  Ron cried, dropping the last forkful of eggs, "You hit too hard for a girl.  And I always underestimate your ambidextrous prowess."

"Equal parts practise and cunning," she replied, smiling sweetly.

The Gryffindor table broke into giggles, but Harry's expression hadn't changed.  Ginny didn't seem to be noticing.  She had been somewhat... off lately, Hermione reflected.

Ginny stood from the table and fixed her collar.  Harry stood with her.  "Gotta go," she said.  "Didn't study for the pop quiz I know we're having in Transfiguration, and I plan on asking sweet but probing questions to McGonagall before class officially starts."

"Go get 'em, Tiger," Ron muttered as he still rubbed his shoulder.

"Hey, talk to you after class?”  Harry said softly, kissing her forehead.

"Oh, right.  You wanted to talk to me.  I'm not in trouble, am I?”  Ginny smirked as she pinched his cheek.

Harry deftly caught her hand mid pinch and used it to pull her closer.  Ginny settled easily into the embrace, her free hand reaching out to encircle Harry’s lower back.  Harry grinned at her, caressing the underneath smoothness of her chin with his own free hand.  She shivered, and he raised an eyebrow.  "Should you be?"

Ron stuck his hands in his ears and shut his eyes,  “Desist, move apart, think platonic thoughts."

More giggling from the Gryffindor table.  Ron could, evidently, work a room.

Ginny shot him a dark look and pulled away from Harry.  "If you can pry yourself away from the retarded sputterings of Jesty McJesterton over there, I'll meet you by the fountain of the Hag Doing Laundry," she said, screwing up her face into its most hag-like impersonation while pretending to launder the remnants of her breakfast. 

"Deal, Sarsaparilla the Smelly.  Good luck with the test."  She missed the last part of his sentence, having made it nearly out of the hall and into the corridor by then.

Harry watched her leave and then sat back down, shaking his head as if to clear it.  His face brightened suddenly.  "Hey, we better go early to Charms and get good seats.  I hear we get to actually perform the Giddy Geas today.  Should prove entertaining, right partner?"  He nudged Ron, who groaned and hid his face in his hands.  Harry smiled as he pushed his empty plate away and reached for his books, but Hermione noticed that his arms were shaky. 

Hermione noticed lots of things. 

As he and Ron laughed about the Giddy Geas, Hermione pursed her lips.  ‘There's something wrong,’ she thought.  ‘Er, maybe I'm just being stupid.’

She tried to shake off the feeling, but it nagged at her. 

Just like that other feeling…

*                       *                       *

Draco really didn’t want to go to Charms today.  It was awful; ever since Slytherin and Gryffindor had changed from having Double Potions together to Double Charms, class just hadn’t been as fun as it used to.  Getting to laugh at Hufflepuff during Potions wasn’t the same as getting to sneer at Potty Potter and his stupid entourage.  What’s more, ever since the war had started, people weren’t as nice to him as they should have been.  In fact, Draco was finding that he had to move carefully, now.  Hogwarts was not the best place to be when you were the widely acknowledged son of a Death Eater.  Especially since the Attack. 

Draco Malfoy refused to think about the Attack as a capitalized word.  It wasn’t that it bothered him at all, of course; it was the fact that he couldn’t seem to get his mind around the concept. He knew that the Mudbloods and the Muggle Lovers had let it happen, and good riddance to them.   They were too weak, and if there was one thing that Draco knew, it was how to take advantage of weakness.  It was in his blood… er, not the weakness, mind you: the taking advantage of, thingy.  Right. 

Still, it was hard to think about. There was defeat and there was …death.  Defeat was when you beat your opponent— a very simple concept. 

And death, well…

Death was supposed to be the ultimate form of defeat, right?  You just… defeat your opponent until the point of death… and then you… won, er something.  Draco shook his head.  It was all too serious.  He’d leave all the decisions to his father, wherever he might be.  Draco would go along like he always had.  Live for the day.  Demand respect.

Hide when necessary.                                 

Draco ran his fingers through his fine, white-blond hair.  It was a nervous habit.  Crabbe and Goyle hadn’t shown up yet, and he was starting to get some stares as he moved down the corridor. 

Late last year, the portraits had all decided to start hating him.  He remembered it clearly—he had been walking to Quidditch practice when all of a sudden, on the wall to his right, a little knight on a fat horse had started to charge in his direction. 

 

 “Knave!  Spineless fish of a man!  Prepare, O craven wizardling, for thy doom!”

Draco kept walking, figuring there had been another accident involving Filch, turpentine, and a medium sized wash rag. 

“You!  Spawn of Foolery!  You!”

Draco started whistling a Weird Sisters tune to drown out all the noise. ‘This place is truly going to the dogs,’ he thought in the back of his mind.  ‘Wall hangings short of a couple gallons oil paint, if you ask—‘

“Bad deed!  Dragon!  Put up your wand!  Duel, if ye hath the viscera for it!  Nay, for thou viscera reeketh!”

With that the little knight dismounted his horse and ran about in a pastoral windmill scene, holding his nose and alarming the three blond girls bathing cloth in the adjacent stream.

Draco stopped then, amused by the antics of the knight.  He wondered if the oldest blond girl would indeed club the armoured man with her washing irons.

“Malfoy!  Draco Malfoy!”  The knight shouted, drawing his sword.  “I have named thee, foul one!  I have power over thee hence.” 

And then the walls started to whisper his name…

Draco froze.  He looked to his right.  In the gilded frame closest to him, the old wizard with the eye patch that kept switching sides was sneering.  “Got ya, now, me boyo-“

“You’re mine, wizardling,” breathed a voice from behind him.

“I say,what?  In a bit of a bind now, are we Draco?  Ho!”

“Your guts for garters, boooooy—“

“Silly little twerp, isn’t he Millificent?”

“You know, Dora…  His ears are a bit pointy.  Definitely a Malfoy trait, if you ask me.  Sure sign of evil, that—“

“Do you want to die, Draco Malfoy?  Do you want to die…?”

Draco had put his hands to his ears and started running, trying to clear his memory of the hundreds of eyes that had been staring at him.  The voices that had condemned him… 

Draco mentally flinched as he remembered the blond girls in the windmill waving obscene gestures and throwing curses at him.  The youngest might have been seven years old…  where had she learned such language?  And what was it she wanted him to do with a square foot of shag carpeting, a rubber chicken and Guy Fawkes?  And who the hell was Guy Fawkes anyway?

From that day on, Draco could not be alone for long in the corridors.  Too much noise, for one thing.  The professors tended to complain.  If he were accompanied by his housemates, or by the professors themselves, it wasn’t so bad: just a couple of hisses and a boo here and there.

But alone…

He breathed a sigh of relief as he spotted Crabbe ambling down the corridor with Goyle hot on his heels.  The portrait of the nun to Draco’s right halted in the middle of her string of expletives.

“Alright, then.  You’ve noticed the extra padding about the place I suppose.”

           

The students stopped their frenzied conversations and dispersed from their groups as tiny Professor Flitwick came through the door.  Professor Flitwick was indeed, a tiny, tiny man; and this was emphasized by the armour he wore, if it could be called armour, that is.  It was made completely of cushions.

           

Hermione absently swatted Ron for the inevitable marshmallow comparison comment and sighed as Harry responded with obligatory laughter.  ‘Really,’ she thought, ‘he’s not even that funny.’   

When the trio had walked into Charms nearly fifteen minutes early to get good seats, they saw that there were no seats to be had.  All blunt objects had been removed from the classroom, the only furniture—Flitwick’s tiny oaken desk and dozens of child-sized bookshelves (debooked of course)—pushed against the walls of the room.  What’s more, every bald surface was swathed in cushionry.  The blackboards were barricaded with bright red cushions.  A blue laminated mat concealed the cobblestone flooring.  Even the tall, oval shaped windows were covered with what looked like giant, fluffy pillows.

Professor Flitwick hobbled to the center of the classroom, and the students immediately formed a circle around him.  Walking while encased in cushions was evidently a most difficult task, and he had to stop to catch his breath before addressing everyone.  The Professor cast a weary glance around the room, obviously not looking forward to today’s lesson.  His glance focused on Neville Longbottom and then on Crabbe and Goyle; the marshmellowesque man actually heaved a sigh that looked more like an involuntary twitch.

“So who can tell me about the Giddy Geas?”  Professor Flitwick continued in a most defeated manner.

Hermione, of course, was the first to raise her hand.

Although Flitwick took comfort in Miss Granger’s evident knowledge of the task at hand, he decided to test how bad the situation could possibly be.

“Mr.… er…  Goyle,” Flitwick started.

Until Draco gave him a rude swat in the back of the head, Goyle, with one ham-sized mitt exploring the canal of his right ear, was blissfully deaf to all concerns.

“Yes sir?” a more aware Goyle now answered, rubbing the back of his thick skull.  Hermione stifled a giggle.

“The…. er… *mumble*,” Flitwick replied, disheartened.

“Sir?”

“Oh blast it, the Giddy Geas!  What is the Giddy Geas!?”  Flitwick tried to swack his forehead with his right palm and failed due to extensive padding.

“It’s an…erm… it’s an erm… charm, sir?”

With that, Flitwick actually launched himself at the padded blackboard and bounced back with such momentum that he barely recovered balance.  Meanwhile, the class had dissolved into uproarious giggles, Ron actually hooting in the crescendo.

“No, Goyle,” Draco seethed at his companion, “It’s a bleeding transfiguration.” This statement actually had the corpulent student scratching his prominent brow in confusion.  Draco sighed.

“Sir,” Draco started when the din began to die down, “The Giddy Geas… it’s like what happens when you drink Veritas Serum, only… happy… and drunkish… and it gives you access to all your memories... and it… er, yeah.”

The professor eyed Draco wearily.  “Better, I suppose.  Miss Granger?”

“The Giddy Geas, “ Hermione began with the affected air she usually took whilst explaining common knowledge to children, “is the deliverance of an altered state of mind…  an actual dumbing down of the senses and the release of not only all inhibitions but all pent up memories as well.  Thus, the Geas, when performed correctly, can secure knowledge from one’s subconscious.  In other words, it gives the performer access to the intended’s guarded thoughts and obscured memories.”

“Well,” the professor started, “that’s one way of putting it.  Honestly though, you all needn’t worry so much.  The version we’re performing only has enough oomph to give us an… altered state.  The real Giddy Geas is a powerful charm only used by the most learned professionals.”

Hearing this, the students started to calm down.  Hermione looked slighted.

Flitwick took a deep breath.  “Alright then.  This counts as the midterm for this class, as you all well know.  We have been studying this charm for nearly two weeks. I had hoped that, for a few of you at least, some small amount of information would have sunk in by now.”  Flitwick gave Goyle the evil eye, but, due to his stature and current choice of outfit, this only made him look like an especially worrisome snowball that has been injected with Sunshine Serum.

“The Giddy Geasis not something to be toyed with, “ he continued sternly.  “Without great concentration, and without control, the Geas can get out of hand,” he paused, indicating the padding.  “Practise with utmost care, and please PLEASE—if there is a problem, ANY problem—do not hesitate to disarm your intended.  I have Reviving Serums taped to the wall for such cases.”  Flitwick paused and screwed his eyes shut for a moment.

She tried not to panic.

Okay, okay, right.  In formal theory, the actual difference between animate-inanimate and animate-animate transfiguration concerns the…  erm… concerns the…

Oh please.

Quiet, you. 

I couldn’t help myself.  It’s such a silly question, this.  Obviously, when comparing theory, the only difference—

Ginny pushed the thought away and nibbled on the end of her quill. She flipped through the quiz for the hundredth time.  Okay, if she missed this question and aced the other five, she could still get…a 79%?  That was passing, right?  But if this was only the first question…  Once more she fell into panicked concentration and began to nibble with an increasing fervor.

You’re going to get ink all over yourself, just you watch.

You’d like that, wouldn’t you.

If you’d just listen to me—

Go away!  This is no time for insanity!  Er… at least not your kind.

Insanity? Still using that old excuse, eh? I’m surprised, love.  I thought you’d have come up with a better explanation by now.

I’ll rationalise any way I like, thank you kindly.  Just, get out of my head before I go crackers!

Ginny, please just listen to me.  You know I don’t like it when you get upset… it gets harder to breathe in here.

Ha!  You’ve never breathed before!  Bad comparison!

A little snippy, are we?  Fine.  Do as you will.  I don’t care.

Tom…

If you really want to know… Inside you, darling, I breathed just fine—

Ginny again pushed the thought away and paused in her quill nibbling to rub that spot between her eyes with her forefinger.  Sliding her finger up her forehead with increased pressure, she attempted to relieve the small knot of pain already blooming.  When no relief came, she sighed—opening her eyes and focusing again on the test.  The answer still eluded her, so she returned to quill nibbling and… other distractions.

Tom… why are you still with me?

Must we do this again?  Fine.  Have it your way, dear.  You’re utterly mad and delusional, recreating dialogues in your head to deal with a traumatic experience from your past.

She snorted.

Thanks.

But then again, maybe—possibly maybe, you aren’t so mad, and I’ve been real all these years while you torture me by dating that… boy.

If I recall, Tom, he was the one who saved me by skewering your pansy-assed, semi-translucent self with a real shiny sword—you evil git.

Not my fault!  I was just a memory with orders—

True to warning, Ginny’s nibbling proved overzealous.  With one bite, her teeth severed the point of the quill and black ink splurted down her chin, pooling onto her desk in the shape of a lopsided killer whale.  Surprised at first, Ginny sat perfectly still and watched the ink from her chin slowly feed the lopsided killer whale until it was of leviathan proportions.  When the ink whale had grown as engorged as it possibly could, Ginny snapped out of her shock by spitting the bitter tasting ink from her mouth onto the neck of a very un-amused Hufflepuff boy.

”Everything alright Miss Weasley?” McGonagall raised an eyebrow from her position at the head of the deadly quiet classroom.

“Er, yes.  Er… no.  Er, may I use the facilities?”

The professor eyed the ink staining her student’s chin and bit back a smile.

“Fine, then.  But do be quick about it.”

Ginny heaved herself from her desk and avoided the stares of her fellow students.  Like they’d never had problems with ink before, she smirked.  Covering her face, she excused herself to the lavatory down the hall and stared at herself in the mirror. The black ink covered her chin in splotches akin to a wooly five o’clock shadow. Ginny burst out laughing, wriggling her eyebrows at her reflection.  When her reflection blew her a shaggy kiss, Ginny collapsed on the floor under the sink in mirth.  Finally, drawing herself to an upright position again, Ginny turned on the tap and gathered some paper towels from the dispenser.

Before she started scrubbing, she paused to look at her reflection again. 

Of course, he had to be there.

A translucent Tom Riddle watched her in the mirror, his eyebrow arched and his lips pursed in an entirely cocky manner.  Arms folded across his chest, widow’s peak allowing unruly strands of his black hair to dangle in front of his face, she couldn’t help but watch him; it utterly unnerved her when he did this.

“This is a girls’ bathroom.  If you please,” she said aloud, trying to keep the shake out of her voice.

No-one else can see me; it’s all quite safe.  I won’t even peek about inappropriately—much.  And besides…  I get to say it, and you can’t stop me.

“Say what?” she demanded angrily, turning around to confront him, though she knew he wouldn’t be there.

I told you so.

Dammit Tom!  Just leave me alone.  Please.

You’d miss me, Ginny.

Scrubbing her face now, scrubbing it raw, tears gathering in the corners of her brown eyes, she refused to cry.  ‘It’s all right,’ she thought.  ‘I’m just going crazy, that’s all.  What’s a little madness now and then in times of duress, right?  Right?’  A tear escaped and trailed down her cheek, turning grey when it hit the scrubbed stain near her chin.

You already miss me, Ginny.  

‘Why,’ she asked herself, watching with detachment as darkened tears gathered on her chin, ‘does he always have to be right?’

*                       *                       *