Fear of Falling

"Fear of Falling "

An ordinary book has no mind of its own, but is imbued with that of its creator. With each carefully chosen word, etched inside the pages is a spark of life. A diary is a very special book for it holds the spirit of its author, frozen in time, exactly as he was in mind when the words were penned.

Now diaries, just as other books, can be destroyed, the essence of their writer torn to shreds in the ruining of the pages, the ripping of vellum, of binding. They are, after all, mortal creations, containing the dreams and desires, the strengths and weakness of their authors.

But the diary concerned here is no ordinary book.

It is small and wine dark, edged in silver, with a name printed in tall imposing letters across the bottom of its cover. The name is old, the letters deeply grooved, having been traced repeatedly by wandering fingertips. Despite the decades it has seen, the cover is soft and supple. The vellum pages are neither yellowed nor brittle; they are white as cream, flawless, but for one thing. In the center of the book, directly over its spine, is a ragged hole, surrounded by viscous blackness that might be ink or blood.

Someone has tried to murder the book.

But it would not die so easily.

And that is how it came to be floating in the dark place. Thrown into the murk by the hand of the boy who sought to destroy it.

Picked up by one of the small underground streams, it drifts through darkness. It knows to let the stream lead it to the Chamber's center. Knows to wait for the shift in the dark waters, for the form to rise from them and slither over stone, scales singing along the rough-hewn cobbles.

The serpentine creature has already devoured its mother's sightless eyes. It is but a hatchling and its stare cannot yet kill, only strike fear in the hearts of man and animal alike. It comes from the bottom of the underground reservoir where it had accompanied its mother to the dark depths.

On the stone shore the book lies waiting for some time, days or months, resting over blood-ink stained stone, listening to the sound of smooth coils. The pages ruffle and seem to sigh when at last the serpent winds its body around it, flicks a pale, forked tongue over the cover.

The scent of the book is musky, and cool, and dry, much like the serpent's own. The young basilisk closes its yellow eyes and lays its angular head upon the cover, knowing with reptilian certainty that it will eventually be the recipient of sibilant whispers, that hands will once again move lovingly over its body, stroking with parental tenderness the darkly jeweled skin.

It lays its head upon the book and sleeps.

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The halls of Hogwarts' dungeons were not the most welcoming of places. More than one student over the thousand years the school had existed had some to the conclusion that the very walls watched them as they made their way to classes, and whispered to themselves in languages that no one understood. It was often dismissed as the actions of one of the castle's numerous ghosts.

Ginevra Weasley knew better. There was more in the depths of Hogwarts than a ghost marred by silver bloodstains and the stealthy shadow of a sneering potions master.

Still, midnight found her in the dark halls of Slytherin territory, roaming in and out of the torchlight. She was careful to keep to the shadows, not wanting to be caught again by Snape, who had stared at her so intensely and for so long when he had found her running here fingertips along the crags in the dungeon walls that she truly wondered if he could read minds.

He'd taken house points with the usual sneer and sent her back to Gryffindor tower, to the cheery warmth of the common room, to the light.

That had been two nights ago and here she was again, skulking through the corridors like a forgotten memory, trying to lose the feelings that plagued her around blind corners as she spiraled deeper into the castle.

Tonight, Dean had kissed her.

He'd kissed her. In the middle of the entrance to the common room, he'd taken her hand, and pulled her close, and she'd let him.

There had been nothing official, no declarations between the two of them when sitting beside one another at a Quidditch game, or talking over butterbeer in Hogsmeade. And then tonight, after a small interhouse study session, he'd kissed her. And she'd responded, wrapping her arms about his neck, caressing the side of his face, feeling the coarseness of stubble where he'd missed a spot shaving.

Her fingers had become harsh as she clung to him, grasping desperately at the skin of his neck, tangling in the short waves of his hair, and opening herself to him without thought. She'd wanted to feel that tingle in her limbs, that delicious shivering ache that she'd only barely known once before.

But it hadn't come.

They'd parted, her lips tingling from the release of pressure, saliva drying sticky on her mouth. It was a sweet moment for her, nothing more. But Dean had run his fingers lightly over her hair, looking at her with eyes gone dark with adoration and something more. She'd seen the mistake and fled, tossing some half-witted comment over her shoulder about a missed Transfiguration text and ignoring the Fat Lad's disgruntled "harrumph" as she bumped into the painting.

She'd gone to the dungeons. To the only place she knew people would not search for her. She'd been going there for five years, slipping away during the night, when everyone was caught up in his or her own lives. She came to the place where she had once been known. Dream, ephemeral vision, or insidious seducer she found she didn't care. i He'd /i been closer to her than anyone, had been deep inside her very essence, the viscous cells, the tough tendons and ropy muscles, the wirework of her brain. He knew her, inside as well as out.

Foreign tongues in familiar places
Surrender the thrills to the very core
Forever young and blessed with nameless graces
A love that kills and promises more

Tonight, she swore she heard the walls whispering in strange sibilants, in voices she knew but could not place. Still, she followed their whispers into the dark, away from the torchlight that illuminated the inhabitable portions of the castle dungeons.

Inside the walls the voices moved, coiling over masonry and withered pipes, ushering her along with their invisible presence, around corners, down corridors, over and below winding stairways until, finally, they culminated behind stone. She fancied them glittering serpents, twining their sinuous bodies together, each devouring the tails of the other in an endless cycle.

Their tone changed then, no longer urgent and ushering but suggestive...persuasive.

Speak the words, they said and she understood them. Speak the words and we will let you pass; you will be worthy. Speak the words, you are expected.

Ginny's brow furrowed and, for a moment, she wondered how she came to be in this dark place and why she wasn't turning back toward the waiting light and the warmth of the Tower. Then she brushed the craggy stone with her fingertips and knew. That same distant longing that curled insider her skull like a silver fog, and made her belly cavernous and aching, rolled over her stronger than ever when she brushed the spot behind which the voices hovered.

She opened her mouth and a voice that was her own, yet not, cascaded from her lips, flowing like sea foam onto the line of a beach, cold, and silky, and strangely inviting. The words were torrid and beautiful, reviling and seductive, and she knew them, even though the language was Parseltongue and she had never conversed with a serpent.

The wall shuddered and groaned, dust and dirt falling from the crevices, and the stones shivered. The masonry cracked along its seams, splitting in half, leaving a yawning blackness that she stepped into with only the slightest hesitation.

The passage was in the blackest depths of the castle and it curved and curled like some ancient labyrinth, spiraling downward before abruptly leveling out and causing her to stumble against the damp walls.

Up ahead the darkness thinned, interrupted by pale, flickering light. She moved steadily forward and found herself in a dimly lit antechamber that smelled of stale air, old water, and burning wood.

Ash on the carpet and dust on the mirror
Chasing the shadows and the dreaming comes clearer
Gasping for color this perfect heart

It was a room graced with antiquity, long unused as was apparent by the dust that transferred itself to her fingers when she ran them over the curved back of an oak chair.

In the grate to her left, a fire that burned green instead of yellow, a green as bright as the dark mark lighting the sky above assaulted homes. Flickering firelight shadows trembled over wing chairs and once glossy end tables, shimmered faintly on the threads of the oriental rugs lying all across the floor.

This was a sitting room, a part of someone's private chambers. She swirled the tips of her thumb and forefinger together, ridding them of the dust, and called out, "Hello," half expecting her own voice to echo back at her.

There was nothing but the silence, the faint crackling of the fire in its grate, and--wait, somewhere to her right, a soft and dry noise, like autumn leaves rushing over stone. She waited, watching, listening. It seemed to come from an area of blackest shadow, and moving closer she found the deep darkness was, in fact, a door.

Its rusted hinges protested loudly as she pushed against the wood. The door opened only halfway allowing green light to slip through behind her, half illuminating the blackness of the room, showing her the outline of a bed against the room's center wall, the hulking shape of an armoire on the other side, and across from the bed, a dresser, complete with an old mirror rising over it. It caught the green of the firelight and reflected the soft glow, eerily illuminating everything within its reflection.

She stepped into the room and moved toward the mirror, catching the image of her own face in it.

Screaming howl and the children play
Serpents kiss for the words you pray
Whiskey and the devil and the witching hour
Serpents kiss on that untouched flower

Backlit by the green light, she looked almost unearthly. Her hair, grown darker over this last summer, stood out nearly black in the glow, though subtle movements of light gave her locks the tint of blood. Her eyes were huge and dark, the shadows beneath them giving her an appearance of exhaustion, much like she'd had years before when she'd first been beguiled into the dungeons of Hogwarts.

She touched her face in the mirror, half expecting her fingers to sink through the glass as though it were water. Her nails clicked against the mirror's surface, scratching her reflection's cheek.

She sighed.

Why had she come? What was she expecting to find? Some silvery ghost with black hair and blacker eyes, arms open to welcome her?

What a silly girls she was, to be so obsessed with the phantoms of memory. She gave her reflection a wry grin and made to turn when around her legs she felt the unmistakable sensation of coils. Closing her eyes, she recalled stumbling backward into the thick body of the basilisk five years before, as she stood in the depths of the Chamber of Secrets, her hand over her eyes, listening to Tom's hissed commands.

Now, she looked into the dust-laced mirror and watched as a lithe, shining body wound around her legs, her hips, slithered up between her breasts. It was a tiny thing, this one, it couldn't be fully grown, but that didn't mean it couldn't kill...

Her lips parted slightly as the angular head rose and hovered at her line of sight. She watched the patterned back in the mirror as the head dipped forward as though to strike, but all she felt was the brush of lightning quick air across her lips where the forked tongue had grazed her.

The basilisk slid over her shoulder, came around the other side of her head.

They watched one another through the mirror. Woman-child and serpent, brown eyes and sulfur yellow.

Then, just for the briefest of moments, she saw it. The yellow flickered to blue-black in the firelight, gleamed like the oil slicks that Hermione had once shown her pictures of, hovering on the surface of the sea. The snake reared--mouth stretched wide--lunged, and pain seared her throat as the small fangs sank into flesh. Pain, heat, and the strangest sensation of swirling in the depths of her body that eclipsed all other senses and sent her tumbling into darkness.

Searching for a haven, it's no favour
The fingers that shine
Heart beats quicker as the veils start to fall
I'll be craving, the pleasure's all mine

"Ginny." Feathery strokes over her nose and cheeks. The voice, sleek in tone, dark, familiar. "Ginevra." Her name on his tongue always sounded like a prayer or curse. The feather light strokes on her face gave way to heavy wing brushes. "It is time to wake, little Ginny."

"Uhm not little..." she muttered, irritated, struggling against the tide of consciousness that was breaking through the fog in her brain.

A chuckle, like the sound of a viscous potion trickling into a vile, filled the room, and her eyes sprang open but her vision blurred at the edges, and it took a moment for her to focus on the figure leaning near.

He loomed over her, features indistinguishable. The firelight at his back outlined his form in green and cast his face into sickly shadow.

"Are you not glad to see me, little one?"

"Tom?" The name came out as the faintest of hisses; she attempted to sit up. The world swam, the bed beneath her whirled violently, and she felt hands behind her, guiding her back to the pillows. Once she stilled, the world settled before her eyes.

"Rest, little Ginny. You've donated quite a bit of yourself this evening. No sudden movements or you'll make yourself ill."

He turned so the firelight illuminated his profile. She stared at him, a part of her brain that dwelled in the realm of logic denied the fact that he sat before her as tangible as the satin threads in the coverlet, while the rest of it seemed unable to form coherent thought. Her voice was faint when she spoke.

"How--how is it possible..."

She jumped when she felt the hand at her breast, his fingers slipping into her robes. Gods they were so cool...grazing the swell of her breasts before retreating and taking with them a slip of gilded parchment that had been residing in her pocket. He unfolded it, brow raised, and read:

"Memory Restoration." His mouth curled. Mirror image of five years before. "Not exactly intended for the deed accomplished, but you always were a resourceful one, little Ginny." He let the parchment fall.

Ginny watched its descent, the glittering edges fading into the blackness hanging heavy over the floor. "But I--it couldn't--"

"Oh, no. It wasn't all you, little Ginny." His face was suddenly near, close enough that she could see the blue-black irises, make out the dilation of pupil, fatted on the darkness. "But you," a thin finger stroked her face, "were the catalyst."

He smiled, and took his hand from her face, reached into the folds of his robes and held out a book to her. "Remember this?"

Ginny blinked in wonder as she took the scarred and stained diary from his hands and ran her fingertips over the cover. She'd had no idea what had happened to it after Harry had recovered it from the Chamber. Only the faintest thought, or fear, that it had been destroyed.

"Potter," Tom said, smiling, "returned to the entrance of the Chamber of Secrets when no one was around and threw the diary into the cavern. He has no head for the destruction of magical artifacts."

Ginny blinked at him, opened the book and gazed at the laceration in its center, touching the jagged edges with her fingertips. "How did you come to be again? Harry destroyed--" Fingers fell on her lips, quieting her.

Tom cocked his head. "I was not destroyed, but scattered, lost. A ghost of a memory flitting through the world." He paused and leaned in closer, his warm breath stirring her hair, sending shivers along her neck. "But, Ginny, I found a place inside the body I knew, the mind I molded...a place I could slip into when I felt myself fading. I knew I was welcomed there. I know you felt me."

She nodded slowly. She had, from time to time, over the course of the last years, often felt the illusory sensations of a mind that wasn't quite her own, as she had in the days she'd spent writing to Tom when he'd still existed in the diary. Sometimes she caught a thought that wasn't her own, an expression on her face not native to her features, a turn of phrase she'd never spoken, but she'd never made a connection...

"But how, if you were inside me," she paused, felt the heat in her cheeks, "did you come to be in the diary again?"

"Pet," Tom looked at her askance for a moment, "you know the nuances of magic. Things don't always work as one might perceive them."

Ginny blinked, worried her lower lip with her teeth.

"Memory Restoration...and a page torn from a diary," he said, as she was beginning to fidget under the press of his silence.

She stopped and breathed, recalling that day five years ago...she'd not been long out of the hospital wing when she'd headed for the library to meet Hermione for a tutoring session.

Arriving early, she'd kept herself busy by going through some of the books on dreams and on memories, wanting to find out exactly what connection her mottled and missing memories had on the dreams she'd been waking from every night, when she'd come across the spell on restoration.

Such a simple spell. Very nearly a charm. She'd scribbled it down on a piece of parchment and slipped it into her inner robe pocket just as Hermione had entered the library.

Later in the night, she'd taken out the spell, and from her trunk pulled out her old stuffed Kneazle that she still kept with her no matter where she went. It wore a ribbon around its neck and beneath that ribbon was an open section that had been cut and buttoned shut for easy access. Inside the hollow, rolled tightly, was a piece of parchment torn from the diary during their last days of communication. She'd taken it out, smoothed the wrinkles from it, and read again:

...Two stars aligned at the moment of your birth. Listen to me, talking of stars and fate. How positively fanciful. But, you were born for me, Ginny. You know it. You knew it the moment you touched my diary.

The spell was complete in moments. The utterance of the last word had made her world spin, forced her to lie down for fear of falling. She could feel the remnants of the magic moving through her, ephemeral brushes of hot fingertips underneath her skin.

But nothing had happened.

"Nothing happened," Ginny said, blankly.

Tom blinked. "But it did. That little conjuration was enough for my memory to return to the pages of that torn and tattered little book, and from thence to the basilisk, and again, with your help, to my true form."

"My help?"

"Your words. Your blood, Ginny. It was your essence that allowed me to become. I thank you for that." He smiled, beguiling, winsome and swooped toward her quick as a serpent claiming prey.

Candles flicker as the devils dance on the wall
Stroking the naked and the silence gets colder
Stuck on the ceiling and the kissing gets bolder
Biting my nails for fear of revenge

The lightest brush of lips and tongue across her half parted lips, the scent of ink, expensive parchment, and musk amber surrounded her. A wing of heavy hair brushed her face as he pulled back enough to capture her eyes. His own narrowed now. "You smell of another, Ginny." The words were soft, faintly accusatory.

Ginny blinked, remembered the kiss in the common room. "I--"

He passed a hand over her cheek, her lips, halting her words. "I need no explanation, Ginny, but I shall tell you this once: it won't happen again. I don't share what is mine." He leaned toward her once more, breath stirring the hair near her ear.

"What is yours..." Ginny murmured, and the words spilled into her ear: Yes, mine.

Something stirred in her head, in the pit of her stomach, some faint recollection of cold, damp stone beneath her still body as she lay with the last of her spirit slipping away from herself. Echoed in her head were words she barely remembered hearing in her half conscious state inside the Chamber: silly little girl.

"You pompous, arrogant--" She put her hands flat against Tom's chest and shoved.

Half lidded eyes blinked at her, seemingly surprised.

"You're impossible," she said. "You leave me to die in that chamber--not to mention drive me half mad before hand--and disappear on me for five years only to turn up now and start staking claims!"

She pushed herself off the bed, stumbling on her feet.

Tom reclined on his elbows, eyes shining, lips half curled at the corners, watching her as one might watch a kitten first learning to use its claws by worrying a toy mouse.

"I can't believe I bothered with that ridiculous spell," she continued, "I can't believe I wanted to--Oh, there goes the room again." Ginny stopped, lurching against the bedpost, hands out, fingers slipping over the smooth wood and finding no purchase. Her knees buckled and she pitched forward into warm arms, felt herself braced against Tom's frame. She hadn't heard him move from the bed.

"Are you quite finished, Ginny?" There was a slightly amused exasperation in his voice.

"No," she muttered, trying to focus on his eyes, unable to due to the black spots swimming in front of her eyes.

"That's my girl. I was wondering if that spirit of yours was going to make an appearance."

Ginny bristled slightly at his possessive wording and the use of the word 'girl,' but let herself be lifted like a child to the bed anyway, too weak from her last bout with the spinning room to protest.

"As an aside, Ginny, you wouldn't have died in the Chamber," he said as he settled them on the bed, leaning against the pillows with her resting half against his chest.

"What?" Ginny asked, only half lucid, the room still spinning slightly.

"Your death was not needed, Ginny. With what energy you gave and what I would have taken of Potter's, I would have been fully corporeal..."

"Now you tell me..." she murmured, and then stronger, "And I should believe that?"

"It doesn't matter. It's all been said and done. Now, I have but to show you that you are mine, little Ginny. You have been since that first swell of ink."

"Stop calling me little, Tom. I'm not a child any longer."

"That's right..." he said, voice barely audible. He leaned her against the pillows and moved back a few inches. His eyes roaming over her from head to toe made Ginny all too conscious of her disheveled hair, her shirt, with its missing top two buttons, no longer hidden by her robe.

"You've grown so much over these last years," Tom said, eyes contemplative, "but tell me, little Ginny, have you grown in mind, as well?"

She straightened as much as she could against the pillows, tossing her hair over her shoulder and meeting his eyes without flinching.

He sat very still, watching. "Why did you come? Will you say you were seduced into coming?" His smile was a razor. "Will you say you didn't know what would happen? Will you say you were 'losing your mind?' Tell me, little Ginny, where will your excuses fall?"

A silence that spanned eternity and then she spoke and she tasted the truth of her own words. "I have no excuses. I knew exactly what I was doing...just like I did when I took the spell from that book. I knew what would happen; I--I wanted it."

His smile seemed too light and beatific to grace his features, but it did, and she had to turn from the radiance and the triumph in it.

"There's just one more thing, Ginevra," he said as he moved toward her, over her.

"What?" Her voice came out as a whisper.

"Your submission." He passed a hand over her face, the warmth from it radiating along her brow, her cheeks, and traveling inexplicably lower, across her neck, between her breasts, pooling just below her navel. She let out a strangled gasp and the eyes she'd closed flew open to meet Tom's. What was he doing?

"You've told me everything I wanted to hear, but for one thing," he said. He made a motion with his hand, long fingers curving in a graceful arc and she felt a cool, breezy touch beneath her shirt, grazing the tops of her breasts, trickling over her hardening nipples, the sensation bordering on pain.

"Two." Another motion of his hand, and the buttons of her shirt parted with cloth. The phantom touch extended over her exposed belly, caressing her sides, curving against her clothed hips and reaching the hem of her skirt only to slip beneath it, pushing the cloth up around her hips. The contrast of heat and cold, and the sudden light caress in the place she had once felt that elusive shivering ache, nearly undid her.

"Simple," Tom continued, his voice gone rough at the edges. The caressing wind slipped with ease beneath the barrier of cotton, fell against her bare skin, trailed over her folds. She felt the parting, the unfamiliar intrusion, the way her body seemed to tighten and swell at the same time, and the heat and pain that lanced through her as the sensation faded and then returned stronger than before.

"Words." The last fell from his lips in a sibilant whisper, and her spine bowed, body consumed by ice and fire, the tension rising only to break and flare like lightning in her brain, stalling her breaths, sending shock waves all along her skin, until she felt like one teeming mass of nerve endings.

Someone was sobbing. It was her. And words she could barely make out came from her own lips, and she was strangely unsurprised to find that she meant them. "Yours, yours. I'm yours. I know." And she felt, not the cool phantom touch, but the actual sensation of his hands on her, his arms pulling her up and holding her to him. She felt the soft pressure of lips on her head and heard the chuckling whisper.

"That's my girl."

Serpents kiss and the children play
Serpents kiss for the words you pray
Serpents kiss and the witching hour
Serpents kiss on that untouched flower

Minutes or hours later, she woke, surprised she had slept, and turned her face up to find his gaze on her. She toyed with the ends of her shirt, watched the shadows before breaking the silence. "What happens now?"

He blinked slowly, features gone soft in contemplation. "Before morning comes, you will return to your dormitory and continue as before. Except, Ginevra, no more late night trips to the dungeons."

She nodded, feeling her lips curl reflexively. "And you?"

"I...will be the bringer of my own destruction."

She blinked, then understood. "You're going after Voldemort?"

"Ginevra," his voice was patient, "I am Voldemort."

Her eyes closed. "You know what I meant."

She felt him nod. "Yes. I'm afraid my future self has become somewhat...shortsighted, shall we say. There is madness there."

She shivered, but whether from the chill in the air or the sudden chill in his voice she wasn't sure. She curled nearer to him and closed her eyes again as he wrapped his arms around her.

She knew morning must be near, knew many hours must have passed. She could, she thought, sense the press of dawn outside, deep as she was in the bowels of the castle. In an hour or less she would be returning to that light...only to wait for the darkness.

And the darkness, in days or months, would construct his own downfall and become his own successor.

In her mind, the world tilted.

She opened her eyes and let herself fall.