Paper Should Be Good Enough

Paper should be good enough--Chapter 8

Ginny can barely keep from glancing at Harry at dinner, face twisted into a nervous mockup of a smile. He looks down suddenly, away from her, and then up at her. He shakes his head slightly. "No," he mouths.

Anger flushes her cheeks. "You promised," she mouths back at him.

"Just listen," he mouths back. Ron is saying something that she's completely ignored.

"I'm thinking you should hide, Harry. Someone where none of us know about. Because if you don't... well, look at what happened to Neville. Tortured with Cruciatus, both Ginny and Neville's memories wiped. This is obviously someone smart. It's safest for you to hide, that's all I'm saying."

"Ron--" Ginny starts to say, but Harry kicks her in the shin. She looks up quickly and he shakes his head.

He says, "Ron, you know as well as I do that he'll find a way. He always does."

"Whatever," Ron says. "I'm starting to think you want to face him. Some sort of final stand--that would be what it would be. Have you been..." He gestures to some specific meaning she doesn't know.

"Yes," Harry says shortly. "Yes, I have."

"How's it going?"

"Well enough. I'm not learning anything I didn't know, as of yet." Harry bites his lip. "Ron, I'm not going to hide."

Ron leans back. The tension is thick yet again. "It's your decision. Choose wisely. You're no help if you're dead." He gets up and leaves.

Hermione sighs. "He didn't even finish dinner," she says. She squeezes Harry's shoulder. "Everything's going to be okay. You know how Ron can be."

"Yeah," Harry says, but his gaze is on Ginny.

Ginny fakes a smile, but her inner voice mixed with Tom's fills her to the brim with anxiety. Neville nudges her and she flinches. "Hey, Gin, have you heard? There's going to be a dance next week. The prefects arranged it."

Hermione rolls her eyes obviously. "It was Padma Patil's idea." She leans into Harry, fluffing his hair affectionately. "I don't mind though. Harry and I are going, right, Harry?"

"Yeah," he says again. Ginny nearly loses control with Hermione's lovey look and Harry's accepting it, until Neville grabs her wrist. He gives her a look. Neville, she thinks, may be more useful than he seems.

"Come with me, Ginny," he says. "I promise not to step on your feet this time." He gives what looks like a nervous grin, which it actually is, but for far different reasons than most would think.

"Sure," she says, and a smile twitches over her face.

That whore. That whore. That whore.

She can't stop shaking.

Harry still loves me, I know it. Harry still loves me, he has to. Harry still loves me, or that whore--she's going to die.

Her violent train of thought surprises her, and she opens her eyes. There is immediate pain when she moves her hand, for in her fury she buried her fingernails into the arm of the chair she sits in. Tom is now crouched around her, holding her within his arms. Time seems to wane and all the colorful people around her fade.

"She's the most inconsistent of them all," Tom says. "All that playing around with Ron last year--she's an inconsistent flirt. Ron may be trying to kill Harry, but Hermione, she'd break his heart, or cheat on him. You know how Hermione is."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know how Hermione is. That bitch." The anger pulses in her like a second heartbeat. "If she touches Harry again, I'll kill her."

"She'll get what's coming to her." Tom kisses the top of her head, traces her ginger tresses down to her chin. "Perk up. You're ten times the woman she is, and twenty times prettier."

He disappears from around her and life flows back into greys, and her blood flows back to dull, average grey, like it always does when she leaves that world that only Tom and she can inhabit.

Harry is looking into her eyes and giving her a desperate look. Hermione has her arm around him, happily settled into him. She shakes her head and looks away. "I can't wait," she says.

Hermione gives her a shocked look and pushes a plate towards her. "Ginny, eat something," she says. "Good Lord, you're so skinny, you look like you're fading away."

--------

She's done with the dress that night. Her old worn red silk dress robes are now transformed, with a few brightening charms, into a scarlet dress with Juliet sleeves that lingers somewhere above her knees.

"Do you like it?" she asks her friend, Dianthe Perkins. Most of the others are asleep.

"Do I like it? It's amazing," Dianthe says. Her eyes train on Ginny's thin arms. "Have you been eating, Gin? You look a little skinny."

"Yeah," she says. She looks in the mirror. Ginny would now make any Irish stereotype proud, with curls of red hair and emerald eyes. The scarlet of the dress offsets her pale skin and the freckles on her face. Scarlet like blood, flowing from the pages of a diary, or blood flowing from a soul.

When she looks into the mirror, time wanes and Tom's arms slide around her, his head on her shoulder. "You look gorgeous. You're a knockout. That bitch is no competition for you."

"I did my best, Tom."

He runs his fingertips against the line of her jaw. Ginny moves against it, eyes half-closed in something like weariness. "Don't worry. He's yours. He said he loved you more than anything. He can't break that promise."

"I'm starting to think he lied." She shudders and Tom turns her around, clutching her thin shoulders. "I'm starting to think that I can't save him. I'm not strong enough, I've never been strong enough to do anything."

"Shh." He puts a finger to her lips, admonishing. "Do you remember? I'll give you anything you want, Ginny, your heart's desire. You must trust me and only me. Isn't that right?"

She nods, but her eyes spill over with tears. "Then trust me," Tom says. His green eyes lock with her now-green eyes. "You must go to him. Tell him that on the night of the dance, he has to tell Hermione and Ron. Then you must kill Ron. Do you understand? You must kill Ron."

She nods again, swallowing hard. He pulls closer to her, hand cupped against her breast. There's a flash of pain then a rush of power, of arrogance, and she smirks up at Tom with the sudden confidence inside of her. "Go to him," he says, kisses her once on the lips, then disappears again.

Life flows within her veins again, and the arrogance quickly follows. She smooths the dress over her thighs and leaves. "Ginny--" Dianthe says, but she is gone before she hears any more.

--------

Colin is the only one in the common when she gets there. She barely notices him until he says, "Erm, Ginny--"

"What?" She turns on him, hands on her hips.

He turns scarlet and his voice squeaks as he speaks. "Erm, well, I was wondering if you had a date to this dance coming up?"

She turns away from him with the slightest twitch of her skirt. "Don't waste my time, Colin." She casts a quick Memory Spell for five minutes earlier on him, and goes up to the boys' common rooms. She peers into the boys' room. Ron is dead asleep, but Harry is awake and apparently studying for something. "Harry," she whispers at him.

"Ginny!" He puts the candle that he was reading with on the bedside table and runs over to the door as quietly as he can. "What is this?"

"Come with me." She grabs his wrist and pulls him into a bathroom. She locks and soundproofs the room with spells that she has become quite familiar with in the time that Harry and she have been meeting like this. "What the hell was all that with Hermione?"

A guilty look scorches pink across his face. "Look, I can't just say no for no apparent reason, Gin. I'm supposedly her boyfriend."

"And you were supposed to tell them today! You lied to me, Harry, and that's unforgivable." She glares at him, but he's staring at her. "What?" she snaps.

"You look unbelievable, Ginny." It takes considerable efforts for him to speak. "God, that dress is going to liquefy Neville."

"This isn't about my bloody dress--" she pauses, considering the words. "You like it?" He nods slowly, looking her up and down again. "I did it myself, you know," she says.

"Is that your dress robe?" She nods. "The one you wore to the Yule Ball? Amazing," he says. "Look, I know that I didn't follow through, but..." he looks down. "Ron would have killed me right then and there."

Her eyes widen. Does he know what Ron is doing? Then she remembers that the Death Eater bastard is her "overprotective brother." She rolls her eyes. "It's the risk that we're going to have to take. You can't just snog Hermione all over the place and tell me that you love me, you know. There's a slight lack of continuity there."

He flushes. "I have not snogged Hermione once, ever. We went on one date, Ginny, and we never even kissed. You have no right to be jealous."

"Oh, so I hallucinated her putting her hands all over you at dinner tonight."

He rolls his eyes. "Ginny, you're overreacting."

"We will tell them about us the night of the dance." Her voice is firm. "Or I'll tell Ron that you seduced me and are double-timing Hermione."

His eyes are wide, shocked behind his glasses. "Ginny... you'd do that?"

"Prove your love. If you can't, you obviously don't love me." She backs him up against the door and puts her arms around him. "This is for our good, Harry," she says, and kisses him. The moment he reacts against her, Tom appears in her vision behind him. She opens her eyes a little more.

"I told you that he is yours. Trust me, Gin." He disappears, if he was ever there.

She pulls away, the smirk settled on her face. "The night of the dance," she says, and opens the door behind him. Harry nods. He puts his hand on her shoulder, but she drifts away in silence. She doesn't remember changing or falling asleep, but she wakes up the next morning in her nightgown with something clutched inside her fist.

She glances out the window and the sun is rising. She opens her fist and a vial on a chain is lying there. Tied on it is a note in red ink, in her own handwriting: "Five drops if he doesn't. The whole thing if he does. Don't let it touch your skin."

Ginny puts it around her neck and watches the sun rise. Perhaps before this year it would have been beautiful, but it now simply inspires past memories of staring at the sunrise, lonely in her bed, silence in the Burrow. The sun is as red as blood, her eyes a strange dark amber in the light.

When eight o'clock comes, the other girls try to wake her up, but she doesn't respond to anything, and this is mainly because she is not there.

--------

"He's not here," Wormtail says to Lucius Malfoy. "I don't know where he is. He's been missing since eight this morning."

Lucius scowls. "He must be in that little brat's head. Have you looked on the scry yet?"

"The girl's body is empty, Lucius. Something has happened. The point-wizards don't even know what happened."

"I'll talk to them." Lucius goes down the stairs and sees four of the five point-wizards of the pentacle playing poker and the fifth looking on. "What is going on here?" He storms over.

They don't look terribly impressed. Compared to the Dark Lord himself, Lucius Malfoy is about as threatening as a niffler. "He's gone," one says. "There's nothing we can do. We're just waiting until the pentacle reacts again."

"What about before he disappeared?"

Another point-wizard jerks his thumb at the pentacle. "He told us to add more power. We did it. He disappeared. That's all we know, Lucius, so there's no need to interrogate us."

Lucius's eyes flash, but he does nothing. "All right," he says. "But at least put in an effort. If he comes back, would you face his wrath?"

The four playing poker fold their cards and consider this. The one without cards says, "True enough," and they all take their positions on the pentacle. They aim their wands the point of the pentacle they stand at, and light flows up like wind made solid.

--------

Tom? Are you there, Tom?

Am I dead? Did I die?

Where are you, Tom?

Tom...