A Midnight Snack

When Ginny dreams, she goes back to the bathroom.

The sink is always open and gaping at her, and she hardly notices that the stalls are all silent, as though death, too, has deserted them. Whenever she visits in reality, the complete circle of sinks seems to mock her, while their unhappy resident does so quite literally, and she always flees before the memories come too close to the surface of her skin. But somehow, the stillness of the air and the unnatural calm just don't seem important now, and the mouth of the pipe takes up more of her vision with each consecutive step.

When she gets to the bottom, her robes are somehow clean despite the grime that coats her memory. She walks down the tunnel (conveniently forgetting the pile of rocks that should be just there) and into the chamber, winding her way past the snake that blinks lazily in and out of existence, one minute flesh and blood and deadly eyes and the next a rotting corpse, as if it can't quite decide what it wants to wear today, or what time and reality it is, and thus whether or not it has met its end. But she doesn't really notice that either, because he's there.

He's gotten a wand from somewhere, and she has a slight suspicion that it might belong to her, but it doesn't matter because he's twirling it between his fingers and nothing else in the world matters but him. He looks up lazily, and it's obvious that he's been expecting her.

She moves closer.

It is obvious, now that she is right next to him, that he's partially transparent. The grotesque statue starts to loom somewhere around his chest, and down by his waist there's the diary, sitting on the floor but at the same time almost a part of him, flashing in and out of sight as he becomes slightly more solid, then drifts back to being almost a figment of her imagination.

'You don't look very happy about that,' he says, mocking laughter lurking in the back of his eyes.

He could mean any one of a million things: the way he just won't stay dead (no matter how many times Harry stabs the diary and Fawkes cries and her parents show up at school to comfort her with words that don't make any difference), or how he's left her all alone in the dark with brothers who still tease her, or maybe just the snake, and the way the mud's not there, and how the diary was supposed to have gone back to Mr. Malfoy. Or maybe he means all of it. Or something altogether different.

It's obviously a dream now, but her legs won't move, and Tom just laughs as her wand turns into a fork in his hand, heavy and silver. He sticks it into her head as she stands there, helpless. It doesn't hurt, but when he brings it out again there's something on it. It's wispy and torn at the edges and she has a slight suspicion that it might be a piece of her soul.

Tom eats it. Of course.

And suddenly he's a little bit more solid, and she can't stop him as he devours more and more, until she's nearly sure that there's hardly any left. But Harry hasn't shown up, and something in Tom's eyes says that he never will. So she just stands there as he delicately puts the fork back in again and spears the last bit of her. He chews while she screams and screams and starts to drift away.

When Ginny wakes up, sweat freezing her body and hours of darkness still ahead, she somehow can't find the courage to go back to sleep.