Real

Facing Reality

"If fantasies could become reality we'd all be married to Heath Ledger, making out with Tom Felton in a closet, and having romantic dinners with Orlando Bloom. So, unfortunately I must be the one to break the news; dreams are sometimes better left in our head."

~Ashley LeeAnn Fredrick

"Ginny, come here," he slightly demanded, surprised at her words.

"No," Ginny replied feeling braver. "Not again, not if it'll end me up like last time."

"But you see, Ginny, this time I will take care of you; it won't be like last time," Tom said, his voice calming back down. "But if you don't mind yourself...there's no Potter here to save you."

"Yea, you know somehow I thought you would've gotten rid of him by now. Funny how you can't destroy a boy a fourth your age," she said feeling much braver then when she had been in the presence of fifty-year-old Tom.

"You really don't think I'm real?" he asked ignoring her insult. He wouldn't loose his temper with her, not if he could help it.

"Just like last time. Your nothing but a fifty-year-old failure with rats as your servants who wishes he could be who he was when he was fifteen!" she snapped a new fire and energy running through her blood.

Tom stepped closer to her, towering a few inches above her. "I'm not fifty anymore, Ginerva," he said stepping way too close. "I am your Tom, and I am real."

"I won't believe it," she said, trying not to realize the close distance between them.

"Then allow me to prove it," he said sliding his hand behind her head. Ginny's pulse quickened, her stomach doing flip-flops. Every part of her mind was screaming to back away right now and get as far away from possible, but Ginny wasn't listening. She knew he wasn't real, but yet....

Tom Riddle's twenty-two-year-old lips came crashing to hers, stealing her breath away. He took her face in both his hands and pulled her to him, savoring her taste. Ginny rose her hands up to his chest, intending to push away, but somehow they ended up around his neck, her body pressed closely against his. This was Tom, her mind reasoned; and, at least for this moment, he was real.

Ginny pulled back abruptly a few moments later. "No," she said, gasping for air. "You're not real."

"I am real, I promise it Ginny," Tom replied pulling back from her. He reached out, grabbed her arm and started dragging her toward the door. "I'll show you."

"How?" she asked, allowing him to pull her across the room. Wait a minute, her mind thought frantically, do you want him to be real? Ginny couldn't answer it.

"I need your help, my Ginny," he said, stopping at the door and turning to her. "You can help me to stay this way forever; I could be your Tom again."

"Why?" she spat struggling against him now. "So you can spend another forty years terrorizing the wizarding world? So you can be young and strong again, enough so to destroy Harry? I don't think so, Tom."

"I don't want to be Lord Voldemort anymore, Ginny," he said, his eyes looking into her startled ones.

"I don't believe you. When you were fifteen you were already Lord Voldemort," she said, taken aback at having said his name. "You won't change who you are, you're too evil for that."

Tom smirked and twisted the doorknob, stepping, with Ginny behind him, into the next room. Ginny's eyes adjusted to the new darkness of this room. When they did, and she saw what was before her, she gasped audibly. "It...can't be," she struggled to get out.

"It is, Ginny," a voice answered.