Yes - the Virginia Mix

Part of Tom was always Virginia, crying and startled to find herself in Tom, in his mind, in his flesh. He had leached away her life to fuel his own, had helped her pour her soul into the diary, into him, and in the Chamber, she had been transferred into him along with her energy. Tom was marked forever with her presence in his mind, and they knew each other as intimately as it was possible, although Ginny shied away from examining some of his darker memories too closely. When he was destroyed and she was brought back from the edge of death, her soul fled back into its own body, but it was marked with him, an irrevocable presence in her mind.

Ginny dreams at night, years after the chicken killing and the diary and Tom. And she knows that although two years have passed, that time is nothing, because she dreams and she can't forget, and time can't heal when she relives the Chamber. Not every night, no, but irregularly, sometimes not for weeks and sometimes for many nights in a row, often enough to be reminded that he lives on in her and that she is tainted. She knows that Harry dreams, too, because she sees him in her dreams and every morning after, he has shadows under his eyes and a sunken, haunted look she's all too familiar with. They are connected by Tom and by the diary, for Tom had her soul in its pages, and Harry wrote in them.

Night comes, and she's dreaming the old dream, lying once more on the wet stone of the Chamber. A familiar, agonizing wrench as her sight dims and Tom rises out of the black book. When she regains her senses, she's trapped in Tom's mind, in Tom's body, once again. The first moment of revelation, when she reads his mind and searches through his memories. He's a jumble of thoughts, distant memories from a lifetime ago, marked by old-fashioned clothes and unfamiliar faces. Newer memories, more confusing--her perception of threatening messages and sleepless nights layered with his feelings of satisfaction and scorn for his tool. More and more are revealed--calling a horrible, slimy, monstrous snake and strange, hissing noises emerging from her mouth. Things she'd never done, or never realised, until she found them in Tom's mind.

No, she whispers, horrified at Tom's treachery, at her crimes.

Yes, he answers. Yes, and his - their - face curves into a grin, corners lifting.

No, desperately wanting to wake up.

"Yes," comes the answer, and she hears it twice, in their mind and out of their mouth, and realises that it was spoken, and not thought at her. She blinks, mentally, and looks through their eyes.

Harry. Harry stands before her--before them--before Tom, and fear is evident in his uncertain motions, his darting eyes. Tom approaches, and Harry runs his fingers over the pale, clear skin of his face. Ginny, in her corner of Tom's mind, shivers at the caress, and forgetting herself, moans. Yes. Riddle laughs silently at her, and she can feel the smug, self-satisfied tenor of his thoughts while he parts his lips and kisses Harry, tongue sliding into the wet heat of his mouth. Yes, he drawls mockingly, letting the word slide through his mind. Harry kisses back, and Tom's stroking him almost tenderly, moving his fingers along the line of Harry's spine, the hollows between his ribs, and Ginny's lost, lost in Tom and in Harry. She doesn't understand anything anymore, nothing but the wet heat between Tom's legs and the sight of Harry kneeling, swallowing.

Tom laughs, pleased, and wrenches the other boy back up, and Ginny feels him biting Harry's throat, his lips, and gloating in Harry's shivers of pain, his heavy, panting breaths. She loses her awareness of who she is, and can only sigh Yes, yes in their mind, incoherently urging Tom to continue, wanting Harry, the sensation of his hot flesh on Tom's skin, experiencing their stroking tongues, their caresses, feeling everything that Tom does but unable to control any of it. She's as much at his mercy as Harry is and begs him not to stop. He smirks at her, kissing Harry. She feels Harry shuddering, smothered by Tom's lips, struggling beneath the weight of Tom's body, and thinks Yes, staring through Tom's eyes at Harry's, frantic now with a lack of air. Tom moves above him, demanding and still kissing, hard and unbroken and she wants more of Harry's panic, of his hands, of his arousal. Yes, and the dream shatters.

Ginny wakes, writhing, her legs and her nightgown damp and stained. She remembers the feeling of Harry, suffocating and hard, and murmurs, "Yes."