Rating:
PG-13
House:
The Dark Arts
Characters:
Tom Riddle
Genres:
Drama
Era:
Multiple Eras
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban
Stats:
Published: 12/01/2001
Updated: 12/01/2001
Words: 3,608
Chapters: 1
Hits: 2,539

The Lesser Evil

Lady Aeryn

Story Summary:
A familiar and not-entirely-welcome presence returns and counsels a fourteen-year-old, still lovestruck, Ginny Weasley. But how much does she truly want to be rid of him?

The Lesser Evil Prologue

Chapter Summary:
A familiar and not-entirely-welcome presence returns and counsels a fourteen-year-old, still lovestruck, Ginny Weasley. But how much does she truly want to be rid of him?
Posted:
12/01/2001
Hits:
2,539

There are two things I know for certain.

The first is that I know I truly started to feel this way around the beginning of my third year.

The second is that that something I feel is jealousy, unreasonably strong, towards Hermione Granger.

You don’t know how odd it feels for me to say that. You might say it’s perfectly understandable; after all, I’m but the sister of the Boy Who Lived’s best friend, the one who’s gaggled over him ever since that first sight at Platform 9 ¾ yet has never earned a second look from him... and she’s the girl closer to him than any other. Right? Nothing unusual, odd. I’m predictable Ginny Weasley, whose thoughts and actions can always be boiled down to my crush on Harry, no matter if it’s really the cause or not.

Nobody cares to understand.

So maybe that’s why he’s returned now.

No one ever listened to you better than me, Ginny.

I’m but the girl who wears her crush on him like a tattoo on her face, instead of giggling about it behind my hand like any smart girl would have, and that’s all that mattered for anyone. There are times I almost wish what had happened down in the Chamber of Secrets had been common knowledge—so I could be known for something other, be something other, than what I’d been known for since first year. Not the sister of Harry Potter’s best friend. Not the girl who’s reenacted several different fairy tales in her mind repeatedly over the years, just for the reason of casting him in the role of Prince Charming.

And you as the certified Cinderella. Rags and all.

Though that role always seems to... belittle him somehow.

You flatter him more than he is worthy of.

He kicked your butt, I’ll remind you.

Yes, of course. Harry and his magical sword who slayed the giant serpent and saved the swooning captive maid from the dark lair of the evil lord, spiriting her off on his magnificent flying beast. You always did like that tale. Pity on the no happily-ever-after.

The sarcasm hurts. Almost.

I’m used to being the last in line for everything; that’s what happens when you’re the youngest of seven kids—and the only girl—in your family. If I ever was jealous, it was a long time ago and it was usually of my older brothers... not someone distantly tied to me. I’d spent so much of my early life envying my older brothers that by the time I became used to the way things were, it never really occurred to me to be jealous of another girl, someone I could empathize with a lot more than Ron (though he used to try) or my other brothers.

To have envy of someone outside the family, who had never been in competition with me for anything.

So envy wasn’t an alien thing to me... but to feel it towards someone like Hermione... that’s where it turned odd for me.

But as my first year at Hogwarts moved along it became clear that I had really no means, besides that one weak link of the gender, and a link to my brother, to empathize with Hermione over. Hermione may not be popular—but she has friends, great friends. She’s incredibly smart. Well known, and even infamous. And—which has earned her grudging respect, if a bit of steady dislike, from many of the girls at Hogwarts—she has Harry.

But seeing that was just a realization of nothing in common. It wasn’t jealousy, but a sober recognition of something she so easily had that I didn’t. But it’s what I always think of when I think of her now, after my jealousy became just that.

It’s my fourth year now, their fifth; it’s the first real day of the school year. I see her now, just a few seats down the Gryffindor table, sitting next to him with Ron, sharing a laugh with them over a bit of oatmeal and some pumpkin juice... I sometimes wonder if she’s a bit nutters (or just so much more grounded than I ever was), for being so close to him the way she is and completely oblivious to what’s right there before her. Or would be, if only she’d seize it.

(I have to wonder, though—why would I want her to? Her doing that’s the last thing I want her to do, and yet the fact that she doesn’t frustrates me incredibly.)

I don’t mean to slight my brother. Of course I love Ron, so I’m glad he likes Hermione—even if his ways of showing it are as inept as I’ve ever seen. It’s just that if I was in Hermione’s place, so close to him all the time—I have to wonder if I’d have the strength to stay his friend for long. Every girl in my dormitory thinks Hermione is at least slightly crazy: if they were that close to Harry Potter on a daily basis, they’d definitely try to take advantage of it. He’s the hero, the boy who lived, why wouldn’t she like him?

That has quite a bit to do with the point of view of the person involved, obviously, dear.

I do wish he’d quit intruding. But wishes alone never do anything. I know this too well.

And now that you realize it, Ginny, what do you plan to do about it? Perhaps I should take matters into my own hands once more.

Another reason I feel so odd feeling this way is because despite it all, I like to think of Hermione as a friend. She doesn’t always go out of her way to talk to me at school... but she definitely doesn’t make the same attempts to ditch me that Harry and Ron—my own brother!—always do. When Harry and Ron aren’t around (or are being asses), she talks to me sometimes. I was the one she confided in last year when she told me Viktor Krum and Neville had asked her to the Yule Ball. We spend time together during the summers at my house—that’s the one place I do think the gender thing does help; when you’re the only two girls close to your age in a house otherwise dripping with boys, that weak gender link can’t help but (for a time, anyway) strengthen a bit. And she was always far from a bad roommate for me when she spent time at the Burrow.

So I hate saying that watching her angers me, even during otherwise harmless times like this, friggin’ breakfast in the Great Hall. The way I only have to be in the same room as him to want to suddenly go silly—yet she’s constantly at his side with Ron, and always perfectly composed to boot!

She couldn’t taunt me anymore if she were consciously trying, though I know she’s not. And yet, it’s never bothered me this much before.

"If she were trying, she wouldn’t be near so effective," the coolly familiar voice in my mind points out rather nastily. It’s a voice I’ve come to be used to... and I think he’s starting to take advantage of that.

Again. But I can’t make myself, well... un-used to him, can I?

(Nor can I make this thing with Harry disappear, it seems... oh, I wasn’t over him, but I certainly had achieved some sort of peace in that he and I would likely never be anything. I would still feel... subdued, softened by his presence, a little weakness for him that’s always been there... but it’s never been so... fiery before.)

I never wanted to be used to him again... not that I ever expected to; how could I have? But now I am, and I think I know why.

And I want him to leave. Yet at the same time...

No. I won’t go there. He’s just as dangerous to me now as he was when I was eleven. I don’t know what scares me more... the fact that he’s back... the fact I’m growing used to him again...

Or that I don’t seem to be more concerned about that.

Ah, the things that occur to you over cold oatmeal and juice.

-------------------------------

First year, I thought I would surely die from the embarrassment my crush on Harry caused me. My dorm mates convinced me to send that stupid singing valentine; I’ve never been good at masking my emotions, so they knew perfectly well I had a huge crush on Harry, and of course, having nothing better to waste their time on, would want to see something interesting come of it.

And of course they got it.

Damn Draco Malfoy. If he hadn’t said what he’d said right then—in front of him! Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything... should have just left as soon as he opened the valentine. If I wanted to know how he felt about it (I wasn’t sure I did anyway) I’d probably find out from Ron—or the other half of the student population of Hogwarts that had witnessed it—soon enough.

I sometimes wonder what Tom would have thought about the whole incident—before I catch myself, that is. He’d probably tell me the valentine was a foolish idea, and that playing up to those giggly floo-heads was no reason to send it. And he’d be right on both counts.

Those girls in my dormitory aren’t my friends. Though Hermione and I aren’t as close as she is with Harry and Ron... she’s certainly worth more to me than they are.

But is Harry really worth more? How much does him noticing me matter?

Not enough, and you know it. Don’t patronize yourself. You deserve better.

Than what? That or Harry?

It was dead embarrassing at times. No matter how much I don’t like admitting it now... I do know that if I hadn’t had Tom to talk to so often that first part of the year, I probably would have never left my dormitory except when absolutely necessary. Well, with them always leaving me out of things, at least it made things easier to avoid Harry—and therefore usually Hermione too—than they would normally have been.

I do like her. And yet, sometimes I wonder how she can be so clueless.

The answer is quite simple, Ginny dear.

He liked Cho Chang, but romantic or not Hermione really is the number one girl—the only girl—in Harry’s life. If Hermione ever liked Harry in a way other than friends, then my chances would be less than zero. Look how close they are even now, perfectly platonic. I wouldn’t have a hope.

I also hate admitting that that’s one of the reasons I’m glad Ron likes her. Because if she decided she liked him back, that would ease my frustration.

Even when he started liking Cho. I can’t admit I was entirely upset when I learned Cho had turned him down for the Yule Ball. (Even though I did question just how smart Ravenclaws actually were for a little while.)

You see, that’s another thing. I don’t like seeing him because sometimes it brings up a part of me I don’t like. As much as I don’t like being seen as the perfectly innocent type, I don’t like even more walking around taking selfish satisfaction from other people’s discomforts... or being jealous of people.

Just how much of this is due to you, I wonder?

For once, he gives no answer. (But no matter, I suppose: he’s already ruined my breakfast now, anyway. Potions is going to be a blast.)

It’s like my feelings are this canvas: the light shining on one part, while the other, dark, side sees just a little bit of it coming through—just enough to want more of it, but never knowing if there’s going to ever be more, but wanting more just the same... and twisting itself whatever way it can to get it. So the darker part shows up in the front sometimes.

Ever since my first year at Hogwarts I’ve felt that sometimes. After I found that awful old diary... I wish I never had.

But as I heard Harry say once—must be a Muggle saying, because the imagery is very odd, though it seems to make sense—if wishes were horses, we’d be drowning in crap.

Again, but—sometimes, even if only for a little while... crap isn’t always bad.

Tom Riddle looked so much like Harry... slender, a bit on the pale side, with that same head of black hair... even a little bit of that wonderful untidiness of Harry’s that always made me just want to straighten it, even if only for the reason of getting to run my fingers through it. But he looked so much like Harry (more handsome, actually)... and acted so nice...

I didn’t even have to squint my eyes very much for Tom to look like Harry... and his ventures with me into his memory were far more than Harry’d ever given me. The things he would whisper in my ear; I never thought it was possible for someone other than Harry to make me feel that way.

(Whether he was listening or not, I was very grateful for his silence right then.)

Even if he was only using me in the end.

But I do have to wonder how I’d feel if it had been Harry that had done that instead, whether I would feel so angry...

No. Harry would never do that.

He hardly gives you the time of day, either, and even then only because you are his best friend’s little sister.

I shunt the voice away as forcefully as possible. Harry told me that when I was writing in the diary Tom was using me, draining me... putting some of his spirit into me.

So if it’s in me, it might not have died when Harry destroyed the diary.

You might have thought something like that would have made Harry and I closer—having survived the horrific attack of Slytherin’s monster, him saving my life... and the fact that now, we’re probably the only two people living (aside from Death Eaters, maybe) that now carry a piece of Voldemort’s evil in us. Our experience was unique among any at Hogwarts.

But no. Come September, things were back to their wonderful, non-interactive state between us. Which has continued with little change to this day, three years later.

There are times—like here at the breakfast table—when the only light I can see Hermione through is a nasty tinged green bit of jealousy, that I also wonder just how much of Voldemort was put in me... and how much of it is still here.

"She doesn’t deserve him," I can all but hear him whisper in my ear, so close his breath—which before now I’ve never felt in anything but dreams—is just noticeable on my shoulder. "He can do so much better than that stuck-up Mudblood... and you know it."

I swallow, a lump forming around the cold oatmeal I’ve been trying to eat.

"Don’t you, Ginny."

I stare at the two of them again, Hermione resting her hand on Harry’s shoulder to brace herself as she laughed at one of his terribly unfunny—yet still, somehow so endearing—jokes. See the way he looks at her, even if he himself doesn’t notice. I saw the way he gawped at her when she arrived all resplendent and beautiful at the Yule Ball, happily tagging on the arm of Viktor Krum. Granted, most everyone was gawping. How could you not notice? She was beautiful. But Harry... he noticed. (With things like that it’s not any wonder Rita Skeeter wrote the drivel about them that she did.)

And she saw it, too. If the nervous grin on her face when she waved back at him at that moment was any indicator, I don’t think she ever expected an expression like that (however brief) towards her from her oh-so-platonic friend. Maybe she even liked it. I don’t know. If there are any other signs, she’s certainly kept them well hidden. A little too well hidden.

"She’s not even remotely interested in him," I murmur quietly to no one, forcing down that cold lump of cereal.

"Exactly. So why, dear Ginny, does she deserve such focus of his attention? What makes her so special that she’s the only girl he’s ever made more than five minutes’ time for in his life?"

She’s his friend, I want to say; it’s the simple, and obvious, answer.

But I can’t answer. I know he probably wants me to but his question has the added purpose of making me feel even more terrible about myself, which I’ve no doubt he intends.

I’m not Harry’s friend. I’m not even his anything.

But, no matter what he intends, what he’s done to me... Tom has never sugar-coated facts for my benefit. Serves them to me straight up in a painful slap, yes, but there nonetheless...

Which makes me hate this situation all the more.

"You do realize that he is also beneath you," Tom says, taking my chin in his long, surprisingly elegant invisible fingers that have become so familiar to me... almost always a cold comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. "Powerful and famous though he may be, he is incredibly daft."

What do you mean?

"Just look."

I do, and at first I see nothing different than usual. I see Ron, Harry, and Hermione, insular as usual. Then I see Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil (who was on my mental bad list briefly last year—getting to go to the ball with Harry and managing to look wonderful alongside him) giggling and pointing at Harry in a way I recognize all too well: it’s like what I used to do. It’s a sorely tempting thing to hope they spill their pumpkin juice all over themselves during the stupid process.

He deserves better than that.

And just what, or who, would that be, pray tell?

I wonder if they do the same chattering over him around Hermione that my dormmates do around me.

I look at Harry again. He’s oblivious to it all, happily chatting away with Hermione, not noticing anyone else at all. Harry could probably get just about any girl he wanted—but he doesn’t pay attention to any of them.

He’s either gay—which he’s obviously not, if the Cho Chang incident’s any indicator—or he’s simply not looking...

And maybe there’s a reason behind that.

You don’t look for what you think you have.

But that’s the fact that’s there—he’s not looking. He never notices any girl but Hermione. Not even Cho, so much anymore.

"There’s the ticket." The invisible hand turns my face up to his, staring into those eyes that never can seem to decide what color they are... they’re pretty eyes, the way they seem to find some way to turn a different color every time I see them, and look good each time. Turquoise. Silver. Deep blue.

Merlin help me when they turn red.

Or bright green.

"Hermione. Cho Chang. What do they have in common, Ginny?"

I know the answer, but feel the urge to make a crack nonetheless. Brown eyes and affinities towards blue dress robes?

"No. I mean, yes," he amends, and it’s a bit satisfying to hear him actually stumble for once. "But you know what I mean. Harry never notices any girls but the ones he can’t have. Do you really want someone like that?" Tom’s finger brushed my lip then, in a way that had he been... real, I probably would have slapped him.

Or had he been Harry, felt a blind (and incredibly dumb) urge to kiss right back.

I don’t see why you care so much.

"Do you really want to know, Ginny?" The look in his eyes sparks something in me, a mix of shock and revulsion... but those seem to be just instinctive. Like there isn’t really much truth to them.

But I thrust the hand away, glaring at a person who is, to everyone else around me, invisible. I bite the urge to outwardly tell him to shut up; I get enough looks from people when they recognize me for the only thing I’ve ever been known for, as the girl who’s so hopelessly giggly over Harry Potter she can’t seem to control herself around him. If they found out I had a disembodied Dark Lord’s incarnation waking up in my brain, they’d probably shunt me off to St. Mungo’s in an instant. I don’t want to be treated like an invalid.

My business with Tom Riddle has nothing to do with them. Whatever I do with him... I will be the one who does it.

It’s better for them to think I’m still only foolishly crushing. Though I’m tired of being that girl. I really am.

That’s another thing about liking Harry that I don’t like—what he brings out in me. No matter how deep his eyes are, that liquid green like a serpent, but so cool and warm at the same time and you want nothing more than to dive into them... that interminably messy hair of his, which I feel it would be the tiniest slice of heaven (not the tiniest, maybe) to just run my fingers through...

Then why does he make me feel like I’m in hell?

"Hell’s not always so bad," a voice whispers, and for an instant then, I feel a gently burning liquid contact with my lips.

And it’s not nearly as unpleasant as I would have hoped.



* * * * *


Yes, we will begin to move out of the present tense with the next chapter. :-)