Ærist

One

1.

Tom hoped no-one saw him as he slid the diary amongst the shelves of the unused section of the library. And then he left—and hopefully forgot about it.

2.

School hadn't really been all too terrible that year: the failure with the chamber had been a set back, but he decided that he would survive. Sixteen already—seventeen in just a little while—and the other Slytherins privately called him Voldemort, and the orphanage wouldn't be so bad. He didn't plan to stay there much longer, anyway. He intended to pack up his things and live on his own, make some money—the galleon to pound exchange rate was very good.

Not many people knew that, but Tom prided himself on both his magical and muggle knowledge.

The door slid open—Sabine Parkinson was pretty:

'Tom,' she asks. 'Tom, why are you so quiet?'

He didn't respond.

'You're ignoring me…' and she looked out of the window at the scenery as it whipped past: it was pretty, and in a way gruesome. A mess of colours, vivid individually, but garish when looked at as a whole: 'Are you still coming to visit St. Ives these holidays?'

He was silent for a moment longer. 'Yes, I am.'

'Bon. There's a train that passes through, leaving from Platform Eight and a Half. Owl me before you leave.' She turned, and as the door slid shut behind her, she was gone: she made a passing wave but he didn't see it:

Tom just sat there, on the chair and looked out the window; he didn't mind the garish mess of colours, or the trees flicking past every now and then. And by the time it was dark they were pulling into Kings Cross and he was feeling refreshed. It was Sabine that waved to him, as she clambered into her luxurious automobile and chatted with the servant—later, it began to rain.

3.

The Leaky Cauldron had been his base of operations for about three days—cold and wet and still raining—ever since he'd left the Orphanage over in Soho. The money had been sporadic, and he'd managed to survive by doing the odd job in Flourish and Blotts, or, becoming more and more frequent, brewing illegal dark arts potions and selling them in the seedier parts of Knocturn Alley.

He was a familiar face at Les Potions Sombre, and they'd even placed him on a roll for creation of Polyjuice Potion. He'd started it a few days ago, and already there were customers on the month-long waiting list. The shop stank—most potions shops did, but this one smelt of death and the average potion shop—and was dark and musty, but the pay wasn't too bad.

'Tom,' the owner said: he wasn't too old—just a little bit old, maybe forty—but just old enough for the thinning crown and the slightly graying hair. His face was ragged: the business ran in the family, and his son was already starting to take over: 'one day you'll be a brilliant maître du arts, but you have to apply yourself.'

Tom nodded, but he was distracted by his plans.

4.

St. Ives hadn't changed much since Sabine had shown him the photograph. The drive was long and sweeping, and he could make out the curved lake in the distance. There were trees and it all seemed like a miniature Hogwarts:—'The chill is rather biting, Tom,' Sabine says, sitting on her chair in the gazebo that looked over the hills, 'are you sure you don't want any tea?'

He shakes his head.—'Tom!' Sabine yelled. 'You're here! You must come inside, I've had the room made up for you and—'

He smiles at her.

5.

Robes were most definitely not the most recent fashion. Robes were the clothes that only people like Albus Dumbledore and the cranky old teachers at Hogwarts would wear, and Tom Riddle was most neither old, cranky, nor a teacher. The vogue was the suit, usually a light gray; the cigarette was also prominent—with a filter for a lady—, and Tom seemed to fit in perfectly.

French was also vogue—'Oui,' Tom said to the water, 'j'aurai au un autre verre'—and wine was always nice at that time of year—

'Vont comment les affairs, Jacques?'

One of them lit a match. It flickered and then flared as it sucked up air; a second later he was sucking in the smoke from a glowing cigarette. He turned back to his friend: 'Pas trop mauvais,'—

The nightclub was smoky and Tom wasn't really supposed to drink: Sabine was there, though, and she was older than him by a little bit. The wine flowed freely, and the nightclub was one of the largest in the St. Ives area. Tom decided that he liked St. Ives—the semi-magical community integrated perfectly with the surrounding muggle community, and even still the requests were coming from Les Potions Sombre.

It's raining outside.

'Tom,' she says, ' do you want to go home now?'

He looks up from his drink. 'Maybe in a bit…' and then takes another sip.

Sabine rearranges her feather boa, but secretly she's as ruffled as a bird in a strong wind.

6.

Midnight found Tom in Sabine's bedroom—naked, and totally drunk: Sabine never mind, she'd planned it that way. Expected it with every part of her being, and she wasn't that disappointed. Not by his touching or his kissing or the every part of his body that touched hers, because that was just right in the way that she saw it. And then later, when she watched him, the moonlight was gone—the curtains were closed—but still he seemed to glow.

Later, when she was standing on the balcony, the icy cold wind blew: 'Sabine?' he asked, and she turned. Her nightgown was thin—paper thin and—

'What happened? Why am I here?'

She smiled: 'You were drunk. I had a portkey to my bedroom—but I couldn't move you. You needed sleep. So I left you there.'

He looked down at his feet. 'Oh,'

'Oui,' she said, 'now you must go back to bed. Come on.'

He did that: but inside, he knew what had really happened.

7.

He left Little Hangleton quickly—doubting that anyone saw him—and went back to St. Ives.

Two

1.

She knew she should have been back at Hogwarts, cuddled up amongst the sheets and dreaming the sweet dreams that young girls dreamt—but sixteen came at a price: and she'd saved up. The book had been wedged between two shelves in the library, and covered in dust. Ginny suspected that Madame Pince didn't even know it existed—and for that, she was grateful.

A roaring trade, the seventh years called it. But she knew the secret. Parchment with embedded charms. Doing everything from concealing text with a single tap of a quill to calculations that could easily be covered up in arithmancy. She knew it was wrong: but she didn't really care. She should have known better then to create an illusion of herself in her bed and sneak along the shadows: should have known better than to create a two-way portkey that took her to Diagon Alley.

But she didn't.

She stepped into Les Potions Sombre down the darkened Knocturn Alley with a worried look on her face.

2.

'Un journal?' the man behind the counter asked. Forty years old. He took the business over from his father—and was called a true maître du arts, but he really didn't care about that. Ginny nodded her head, slightly worried and more than just a little scared: she reached into her pocket and pulled out the sheet of parchment. She hadn't meant to keep it. But she couldn't resist.

'I see…' he said.

As he placed it on the counter, he uncorked a vial and dripped a tiny drop onto the parchment—it sizzled: ink blossomed forth from the center of the stain, flickering out along the paper like cracks in fine china. Soon, it was gone, and all that was left was a slight drop of ink in the center that was slowly fading away. He looked up at her with a smile on his face—but his eye was twitching behind the frame of his glasses.

'Can you fix it?'—Ginny was starting to panic.

'Oui,' the man said, and then looked up at her—'before the sun rises, I expect—' she blushed '—that you'll want to return to your home and forget about your visit to this garish place?'

She nodded. Unseen.

'Then oui, I can fix it,' and his French accent was hard to follow, 'all that needs doing is the magic to be transferred from this—' gestured to the parchment '—piece of parchment, into a new journal.'

He smiled then: 'It won't take too long,'—he smiles—'sit down, I'll get it ready.'

—when she flicks through the pages of the diary—cover says le journal, but there's nothing else—it's just déjà vu, because she remembers it and at the exact same time it's totally different.

She thanked the man and paid him.

3.

Hogwarts—back at Hogwarts she slid into her bed and closed the curtains and muttered the silencing charm. She leaned back on her pillows and opened the journal and dipped her quill in the open ink pot and began to write—'Hello, my name is Ginny Weasley,' and as it faded away, the magic inside awoke.

'Hello Ginny Weasley,' scrawled it back, 'how did you find my journal?'

And her heart raced—

She lied.

'In a library, at Hogwarts. That's where I am now.'

His writing slowly filled her mind.

4.

Fills her mind.

5.

Later, she lies on a bench next to the lake—where the lovers sit and kiss and do lots of things that the teachers tut about, but secretly did when they were at Hogwarts: and Ginny sits there, at midnight, and she's not supposed to be out of her bed but she's used Old magic to charm the diary to make her seem uninteresting—inconspicuous, as it were—and so she sits there, on the end of the chair.

And she's jotting in the diary—and grinning, with a yellow gleam to her eyes—as on the empty part of the bench—

'It's Ron,' she writes in the diary, 'screwing his girlfriend.'

She'd never have said anything like that before this—but she was different before this, and the gleam in her eyes is really testament to that: 'Oh?' Tom asks her, in the diary but able to come out if he wanted to—even though he doesn't want to because Ginny is just someone you want to talk to all the time and—'who's that?'

'Some girl from Gryffindor, Lavender Brown, I think.'

The moans are the highpoint: and then stop.

'I think he's done,' she scribbles, while Ron's kissing Lavender and Ginny's trying not to snicker and—

Tom scribbles a drawing of—an apparent—Ron and his girlfriend and Ginny snickers: And Ron suddenly stops and looks around, and right at Ginny and into her eyes, and they narrow—but then he hasn't seen her and.

'It's what you get,' Tom whispers in her ear, 'for being so pretty.'

She giggles when he kisses her.

Three

1.

Ginny floated in the window—unseen, on a gust of wind—and crouched to a stop: the cloak covered her head and almost the rest of her body so nobody saw her. That was the plan. The first part of the plan—her feet made a muffled tap on the floor, but then it was gone and shrugged off as a cat by the couple in the apartment below: Ginny pulled the hood back, and looked around.

It was certainly the correct apartment—vase in the corner, glass windows with no screens on the third floor up, second on the left, with the window always open at night, and—then she stood. Tall, stood tall and her hair flowed down her back. Red hair red hair copper curls, or so Tom whispered in her ear at—

night, cold night and the full moon rising: she was in the forest, always in the forest. Seventh year, final year. Voldemort arisen. Darkness, and nothing but darkness and the occasional wax dummy with just a little bit of blood speckled on it's pale white face—she turned, looked through the trees and the darkness and.

'Virginia,' he said—remembering nothing, but the diary in her hand and when he touched it—

the ice light flowed from the book, ice light, nice light, into him and—

'Ginny…' he whispered. Voice so familiar. Old, but familiar.

Her heart raced, that—night.

She blew the sleeping charm from her lips:—victim, check, totally asleep, check, covered, check, alive, check, correct—'Person?' she whispered aloud, shattered the silence but that was ok, because her victim definitely wasn't going to hear her, and the lock of brown hair's familiar.

She lifts the cover: shocked again. 'That's Medusa?' she asks, aloud.

—then she slides back into her mask.

2.

Neville sipped Earl Grey. After the first sip, it didn't taste too bad—bitter, and strangely leafy when it swirled around his mouth. And then, once he'd swallowed it, the perfume flowed and the next sip didn't look to bad—he couldn't decide if he liked it or not. It left him dizzy and he looked up: the door slammed shut behind her as she flowed in with her coat swirling out like it usually swirled.

'Neville,' she said—voice dripped with anger, emotion something like that.

He jerked his head up and as he tried to swallow the last mouthful of the tea; it splashed out of his mouth as he choked and landed on the table with a splash. And then everything was silent—he reached out a hand, not even looking, to try and steady the cup but it only made it worse—

and then it shattered.

'Fuck,' he swung his head around and tried to clamber out of the chair—he stood, finally graceful once more: 'don't rush up on me like that,' he muttered, and whispered a spell—'reveni'—and it was suddenly back on the table.

Ginny shook her head: 'Shut up Neville,' she said, 'we've got a bit of a situation.'

He rolled his eyes and tried to adjust his cloak—leather, trying to be fashionable but not really succeeding—but just made it look even worse: he pulled the hood up and scowled at her. She just shrugged and motioned for him to follow; 'We had a raid last night,' she said, 'an apartment in downtown London—a high up researching for the ministry. Our intelligence was impeccable.'

Neville stopped—'And what's the situation then?'—then started again.

'You might now our little, researcher, shall we say?'

The door opened: 'Hermione!' Neville's shocked to say the least.

And Hermione looks up.

3.

The cell was dark and damp and Hermione was wearing tattered nightgown but she had a blanket. Bread and water—half eaten bread and almost undrunk water—were on a tray beside her, but even though there was blood caked on the side of her cheek, she held her grace around her. 'I was wondering when you two'd show up,' she said. 'They still call you the betrayers.'

Neville shrugged—and Ginny remained resolutely apathetic.

Hermione pushed her legs forward and—'So,' she said, 'now we start the game.'

'Game?' Neville asked.

Ginny smirked—sadistic, enter the sadist—'Yes, the game…' she purred.

'Doom, gloom and toasted marshmallows,' Hermione said—absently:—

'What?' Neville asked.

Ginny returned to silence.

'Hell is just doom, gloom and a couple of toasted marshmallows, I don't see what you see in it'—Neville stared, not as angry as he was confused. And then Hermione laughed, the laugh of an insane person. But then she wasn't insane.

'Now,' she said, 'we play the game. You tell me what you want me to tell you, and I refuse.' She spread her hands. 'Begin.'

4.

Neville pretends not to notice Hermione's—sly, worried, afraid, hopeful, shattered, disillusioned, wanting, lusting but broken—glances in Ginny's direction.

5.

The room's silent when she enters: 'My Queen,' Tom says—soft, whisper like death, corpse like stare but his eyes are just brimming with something that isn't death or soft—and Ginny smiles up at him, and they try to ignore her nakedness and the scars and the blood that covers her body, but they're drawn to look—'she's like a train wreck,' one of them says, later, using muggle terms.—

It's quick—Tom doesn't even look.

The head of the new recruit—eyes still gleaming with blatant lust—is gone before anyone can blink: the blood stains the rest of the blood on her body as it rolls past her ankle, and she bends to catch it—the blood smears her hand and she can hear the body toppling lifelessly to the ground—

'I think I'll frame it,' she says.

They can't help but watch her left breast through the curtain of her hair, as she stands on the steps and they're just overt here in the shadows. But none of them say anything—breathe or do anything—because they're afraid: and they should be. And Voldemort tells them to go out when she kisses his cheek.

But Ginny doesn’t really care.

And Neville sighs as the door slams shut at the wave of Tom's wrist.

6.

Hermione will never spill her secrets.

7.

'My lips are dry,' Hermione said.

Ginny shakes her head—'You'll tell us, sooner or later.'

But Hermione shakes her head. 'You know I won't.'

And Ginny knows she's right: most of the time.

8.

She traces the blood in the diagram on the floor—'No,' Hermione says, and rubs at it before tracing another line, 'you got that part wrong…' she stopped, 'be very careful, or you'll summon something you don't want to meet—'

She's lying on her side—feeling slightly lopsided and spinning, and wondering why the ground around her is bloody. Blood, everywhere—in a pool and in her eyes—and when she blinks she can see herself in the puddle of blood, if she moves her eyes to the corners: and her hair, matted in blood, is heavy. She can hear. The words. Muttered. Endless muttered words. Tries to roll over.

'breathe,' hermione says, 'come on ginny, keep breathing'

She can't. She can't. She can't.

'don't,' a hand on hermione's shoulder, 'she's gone…' neville says

But then she's not. And she's watching, staring, feeling the blood on her face and her mind is screaming—why?why?why?—and when she tries to reach forward her hand just splashes around in the blood and she can feel it seeping into her robes: 'She's still alive,' comes the cynical voice. 'Stab her again?' comes the other voice, but when Ginny tries to move.

when she rolls over, she can see herself: and her eyes are gently closing and even though they are—breath fluttering making blood splattering—and she panics and tries to move and she can see her eyelid flicker and then—

It opens and she can see her eyes.

'Ginny,' Hermione says softly in her ear, from the shadows, 'come back now.'

When she rolls over, the panic in her lungs is gone—and when she breathes, all she can taste is the blood in her mouth and the sweet, dull ache in her chest: she swallows, rasps, tries to sit up.

'is she alive?' worried voice—tom's dead body lying in a corner.

She rises from the blood like the phoenix from the ashes.

9.

'He's really gone?' she asks.

She cries when Hermione nods: 'and the control is finally broken,' Albus says.