Rating:
PG-13
House:
The Dark Arts
Characters:
Ginny Weasley Tom Riddle
Genres:
Drama Angst
Era:
Multiple Eras
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban
Stats:
Published: 03/12/2004
Updated: 03/12/2004
Words: 1,483
Chapters: 1
Hits: 719

More Lasting than Ink

Daphne23

Story Summary:
When Dementors board the Hogwarts Express, it's not only Harry that's affected. Ginny is forced to relive her worst memory of the 'memory' that possessed her. 'Missing scene' from PoA. (Edited version of 'Riddle'.)

Chapter Summary:
When Dementors board the Hogwarts Express, it’s not only Harry that’s affected. Ginny is forced to relive her worst memory of the ‘memory’ that possessed her. ‘Missing scene’ from PoA.
Posted:
03/12/2004
Hits:
719
Author's Note:
Thanks to Jess for beta-reading the original! As the summary states, this is an edited version of


She was sitting in a compartment by herself, picking up her schoolbooks one by one, and flicking through the pages. The windows of the Hogwarts Express were quite dark now, and when she glanced out of one of them, she could see nothing but a solid blank. Ginny shivered. She could feel the carriage growing steadily colder. Picking up her copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, she held it by the spine and shook it. There was nothing there. I'm not looking for anything, anyway, she told herself, I'm not thinking about it. I'm looking for - a bookmark, or some old class notes. She put the book down, open on 'Fennel', and began to go through another volume. Still, there was something trembling inside her, rising up as she turned each sheet, falling as she saw only the next page. There couldn't be a scrap from the diary left here, but she imagined it anyway, slipping out from the binding, the familiar slanting handwriting already beginning to make its way across the paper... Ginny felt the breath catch in her throat, and she let the book fall shut.

It was a relief when she noticed the next title on the pile. Unfogging the Future. It must be Ron's, packed in her trunk by mistake. He was starting Divination this year. She'd better go give it to him, find his compartment. The books and other items from her trunk rolled off her lap into a crumpled heap as she stood up. She began to unsteadily make her way along the shuddering, jolting carriages.

She didn't know why she felt colder and colder as she went through compartment after compartment. Like a faint echo, the fear was coming back again. It was a familiar feeling, but she'd been free of it for most of the summer. And it always brought her back to one thing, the memory that scared her the most. When she'd been alone with the diary, trying to think of a safe way to destroy it - and Tom's writing had scrolled down the pages, filling sheet after sheet. She'd felt her hands go weak as she held it, but she hadn't been able to fling it away. It had moved by itself instead, slithering down and falling open on the ground, and he'd begun to emerge from the pages. Head. Body. Then nothing else.

Ginny shuddered, a shiver running through her before she could try to control it. Stop thinking about that, she told herself. It's over. Stop it. The diary - well, she'd never quite known what Harry had done with the diary, but she'd never see it again. What had happened with Voldemort - no, not Voldemort, Tom - it didn't have to matter any more.

She still made a distinction between them, though, Voldemort and Tom.

As she thought that, and reached out for the heavily-gilded handle of the next compartment, the entire corridor went black.

Ginny froze.

She wouldn't be scared, she wouldn't be scared, but she was. Her heart thumped, and she tried to go forwards, but she only stumbled into hard corners. She pushed open the door in front of her - and stepped into somebody else. Ginny yelped with fright.

"Who's that?"

"Who's that?"

"Ginny?"

"Hermione?"

"What are you doing?"

"I was looking for Ron - "

"Come in and sit down - " Hermione said, stepping aside to let Ginny in. Ginny could only make out a faint dark figure in the blacker surroundings, and outlines of people sitting around in the crowded compartment. She sat down in a corner seat, feeling unreasonably grateful to feel something solid against her. She reached out for the sides of the seat and held them tightly.

"Quiet!" someone said, silencing the murmuring and grumbles around her. Ginny looked over, not recognising the voice, and saw a handful of flames blossom in the corner furthest away from her. It was held by a man she didn't know, the light drawing emphasis to his generally faded appearance, and the lines and wrinkles in his face. Was he a new teacher? Ginny thought, confused. She used the unexpected light to look around the carriage - yes, Ron was there, and Neville, and Harry.

"Stay where you are," the man said, getting up and moving across the compartment, the light held out in front of him. But before he could reach the door Ginny had just come through, it opened.

Something tall... chilling... horrible... came in. Ginny had hardly time to make sense of it before a wave of horror swept over her, pressing up against her, spreading from this creature, like the invisible field of a magnet. The thing seemed to get taller and taller. It was standing directly in front of the man, but his flames did not seem to light it -

She stayed in her seat; she knew that. She was even aware of what was going on in the compartment. Harry fell onto the floor, twitching. Ron and Hermione rushed over to him, and she wanted to go to him as well. The man cast an unknown spell...

But at the same time, something was going on in the back of her own mind. A scene was replaying itself, a memory that wasn't hers. It was like it had been with the diary, her very worst time, when she'd felt like Tom was pulling her thoughts away from her and replacing them with something else... something of himself.

In her mind, but through someone else's eyes, she saw a room. It was a dank, dark little cellar, a place that reminded her of Potions class, but to this person, the one whose memory this was, it meant sanctuary. She knew that. That someone else took a step forward, knelt down, and slid open a flagstone on the floor. They looked down into a hole in the ground. She could see their hands reaching forward, picking out three things from the clutter of objects inside: a vial, a knife, and the diary.

She couldn't stop herself beginning to shake.

The diary was newer than she remembered, the gilt lettering on the front unworn. It had clearly been bought quite recently, but the pages were already stained with some sort of brown rust. The person - though she knew now who it must be - reached out, took the knife, and calmly cut their finger. He caught the blood in the vial, equally calmly and professionally, well accustomed to doing this.

The hands upended the vial, and the blood was carefully dripped onto the cover of the diary. Ginny could see that it was already encrusted and stained, as if this ritual had been repeated many times. The hands moved to the compartment again and pulled out a bunch of papers. She began to feel the personality of the person behind the hands - Tom - pressing upon her. The sense of purpose, of enjoyment, of pain, of a raw, hurt anger...

"Once more in the next quarter of the moon - to lock it," the voice muttered to itself. Then, experimentally, the hands withdrew an inkwell and pen from the objects under the stone, and opened the diary. Ginny saw in shock that almost every page was full, not with continuous paragraphs, but with disconnected scraps of words and jottings. On the square marked 'October 31st', the pen wrote 'I am Tom Riddle', then it was laid down. The ink glistened, and dried, and stayed.

The images began to fade, but he was still there, in her head. He wouldn't let go. Not - not Voldemort, but Tom. He didn't want to let go. He wanted the control, but also there was his own sad longing not to be extinguished, which was, she knew suddenly, why he had made the diary in the first place.

All she heard now were words spoken in the same voice, "Two more days now - then even if he does get to me - " and then the picture closed, and her mind was empty again, she could see clearly through her own eyes.

She was sitting huddled in her corner, knees up against her chest, as if she were shrinking away from something. Ron and Hermione were still bending over Harry, and the compartment lights were on again, and the creature had gone.

But, like an aftertaste in her mind, Ginny felt the remaining bits of Tom's personality beginning to lie dormant. Perhaps they wouldn't be woken again. She was forgetting the images she had seen, with the return of her own consciousness. Yet there was still something left, an impression she had, an almost-sympathy she felt for him.

He wasn't quite evil, yet, something said inside her mind, and then Hermione came over and put a comforting arm around her shoulders, and quietly, Ginny sobbed.


Author notes: Thank you to everybody who reviewed the original fic! I would really appreciate any more reviews on this version; they mean a lot to me.