Black Tears

These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase

(Evanescene, "My Immortal")

~*~*~Chapter 2~*~*~

When she came to, it was about morning time, a couple of days after He had captured her. She rubbed her eyes lazily, the past days events momentarily erased from her memory. She stretched out in the big bed and stood up on her rear. Her eyes widened at the realisation that she wasn't back at her house, in her own bed or apartment for that matter. Her memory instantly came back and she felt as though she could've died right there and then. Maybe she was truly dead, she mused to herself as she looked about her surroundings. The room was very spacious, the main object being the, probably, King sized bed, draped in black and green silks that besides covering the big bed fell luxuriously over the canopy and from the ceiling. Exquisite paintings of people she had never seen before in her life hung on the walls, giving the room a more and more aristocratic air by the minute. A royal fireplace carved out of cherry coloured marble, spiked with grey fissures burned low opposite of the bed and when she looked left of it, she saw a big mirror with an expensive frame, that she later on noted, was made out of the same mahogany wood as the frame of the bed.

Maybe I'm in heaven, maybe He killed me, she thought as he pushed the covers aside and she found she was wearing a tight green silk night gown that reached to a stop above her knees. Upon seeing a door beside what looked to be the painting of a very beautiful young woman with straight black hair, she swung her feet over to the side and stood up beside the bed. Checking the end tables for her wand, she found that it wasn't in sight, but then again, if she was dead, she wouldn't need a wand. So resuming her previous actions, she headed for the door at a normal pace, taking the time to look around the room some more. She didn't get very far when just as she had past the mirror, she felt something tug at her ankles and she was yanked backwards into the bed, hitting her head on the headboard in the process. He vision was blurry from pain and as she stood up and rubbed the sore spot where she had hit her head, she noticed that her ankles were bound by an invisible magic chain that kept her in place, and didn't allowed her more access of the room. So much for being dead or in heaven for that matter, Ginny thought with a sigh as she laid back against the soft pillows, not daring to get up again and have another painful repeat of what had happened a moment ago. From lack of having nothing else to do, she fell asleep in a couple of minutes.

~*~*~

"What?" Arthur yelled angrily at a room "full of incompetent ministry officials", as he had formerly put it just a couple of minutes before. "You mean to tell me that a thousand Aurors couldn't see my baby girl get kidnapped in the midst of a fierce battle? What were the rest of her team-mates doing, taking a break and chatting with the Death Eaters?" he inquired his face red from anger.

A short plumped man with a small amount of white hair, tried to speak up, his voice trembling slightly. "S-sir, if I m-may, He-who-must-not-be-name..."

"Oh say his full name you incoherent fool," Arthur snapped harshly.

"Y-yes s-sir. As I w-was saying, V-vold-demort must've p-probably dragged y-our d-daughter, somewhere off of the b-battlefield. T-there was n-no way could an a-Auror've gotten to her a-aid."

Arthur slipped down into his seat and sighed loudly, his head resting in between his hands. "Do we have a way of getting her back?" he asked slightly calmer.

"Not that we know of sir. It is very risky, especially now when the Great War is nearing." A man of about Arthur's age said.

"So what am I supposed to do, sit around and wait for the Dark Lord to deliver the dead body of my daughter to my house?" he asked, voice raising.

No one dared answer and all bore blank expressions, some of pity for the man that sat before them. Arthur gave another long sigh and summoned his secretary, Donna, to write to Dumbledore immediately. Afterwards, after another long pause where nobody dared utter a word, he cancelled the meeting and dismissed his co-workers.

He stood up and left the conference room sully, going to get ready for his meeting with Dumbledore.

~*~*~

Ginny was abruptly woken up by the sound of a door being shut. Her eyes quickly snapped open, an acute awareness etching itself into her senses. She felt a dark magical presence about the room but she didn't see anything that was out of place and might have betrayed some information or even a couple of clues. She rose her head on her elbows and treading carefully across the now messy bed, looked around the room, her eyes darting suspiciously from one side to another. She slithered on her stomach to the other edge of the bed, observing the room once more from another angle of the bed. If she hadn't been in such a stressful situation, she would've thought that her actions were ironically similar to those of a snake. Something transparent moulded itself over the air of the room and as a flash of lighting Ginny's eye was drawn to the transparent shifting. An invisibility cloak, Ginny yelled inside her head as she, out of the corner of her eye spotted a silver, sharp hair pin on the bedside table on the left of the bed. With the great agility of a skilled Auror, she had the hair pin between the grasp of her fingers in barely a mere seconds. Not waiting for another movement from the cloaked person, she hurled it forward and, were she a cat she would've heard rather than see the slash it made as it sliced the invisible material into two separate pieces, leaving the wizard unmasked. She regretted the minute she had set her hands on that hair pin and thrown it. Now, Tom Marvolo Riddle stood unmasked in front of her, the pin at his feet on the expensive Persian rug. He chuckled lightly and, after removing the other half of the cloak off him, he bent down and picked up the sharp hair pin.

"I thought this would be un-harmful, but I see that in the right hands it could be quite dangerous," he said and tossed it onto the bed. Ginny had a feeling that the hair pin wasn't the only thing his words were referring to. She backed away slightly as he came closer, but not once did her gaze waver from his. She watched him intently, calculating...measuring.

"Looks like you have learned a quite a bit since the last time we've met Virginia," he said thinking back to Chamber of Secrets.

She hesitated slightly before she replied, unsure if she should or just stay quiet. When she spoke she managed to keep her feelings at bay and maintain her voice cold and devoid of any emotion. "You'll came to see that I've learned not only a bit, but a great amount."

"I suppose you're never going to fail to surprise me during your imprisonment here."

"Really...imprisonment?" she said, a slight mock tone creeping into her cool voice. "I think I failed to learn that when you imprison somebody you leave them with sharp and pointy objects" she said and moved to her left, her hand searching for the hair pin. She found it and hold it up in front of Tom's face, the light shinning brightly on the Chinese styled hair pin.

"Funny how you dare to mock me in my own bedroom, knowing that with only one flick of my wand you're life could be washed away." He stated simply as a ghost smile settled itself onto his face.

"Maybe during my 'imprisonment' here you'll learn that I care for life very little. Why else would have I joined the Auror ranks?" she asked him, her eyes daring him to answer. He ignored her look and instead chose to not reply to her question.

"So, why am I being held prisoner?" she asked as she gave a small impatient huff and plopped down on the bed. She momentarily closed her eyes, blocking out his handsome face. As hard as she tried to keep her mind blank, his face swam in front of her eyes even when she was trying to find peace in the darkness. It was becoming harder and harder to keep her feeling concealed and she didn't know how much longer she could sustain them. She prayed that he would leave soon.

"Those are my reasons and only mine to know," he said coldly as he watched her eyes flutter close. He felt a real smile slowly touch his eyes upon the thought that her eyelashes flutter as gracefully as a butterflies' wings. He quickly pulled back his stone wall and cursed himself for allowing even a small amount of emotions corrupt his black soul. As though a bucket of ice-cold water had been dumped on him, he remembered his reasons for capturing her in the first place and from inside his robes he pulled out a vial and a sharp knife with two glistering emeralds on the side of the handle.

Ginny didn't reply to his rude answer but remained silent, with her eyes closed awaiting his next step. She never anticipated the sharp pain of the knife as it slowly but deadly painful gave deep gash into her right arm, barely just catching her throbbing vein. It slashed open and started shedding blood into the vial. She screamed and opened her eyes, trying helplessly to pull her hand but found she couldn't not as it seemed she had momentarily lost control over her hand in Tom's iron strong grip. She tried to kick him in the face with one of her long legs but he had the vial filled up in an instant and managed to pull away from her right before the impact. She growled as she regained control of her hand which, due to the rapid loss of blood, was slowly growing numb. Standing up on the bed, blood trickling from her hand, staining the green sheets into an almost black colour Tom thought she looked extremely sexy and felt a strange sort of yearning. Maybe getting an alternative to Belle for a couple of months wouldn't be so bad, he mused thoughtfully as he pulled his wand out an healed her cut.

"What the hell did you do that for you ruddy bastard?" she yelled furiously at him still cradling her arm.

He merely smiled at her colourful choice of words 'ruddy' and 'bastard' that quite amused him. "Get cleaned up and eat something before I came back. There is a bathroom on the left" he pointed to a door near the mirror. "By the time you're done in the bathroom the houseleves would have probably already brought you some food. If they don't let me know," he said with a bit more force the last part. Ginny's eyes darkened.

"How can you treat your houseleves so cruelly? What's it to you if a die of starvation?" she snapped angrily as she got off the bed. He came towards her rapidly, his had rose up as though to strike her but as Ginny closed her eyes awaiting the impact it never came. Instead, when she opened her eyes she found that his face was very close to hers and she found that it was getting very hard to breathe. He grabbed her chin forcefully in such a grip that would sure leave bruises, but as later found didn't.

"Don't you dare tell me that to do in my own house." He said in a dangerous soft and slow voice that cut Ginny's hearing like sharp little razors. "And if I find that you've been skipping meals or doing anything to hurt your self I'm sure that the opinion in which you regard me now will be high to that of which you will poses after I'm done with you." Ginny, despite her bold and courageous front she had put up a couple of moments before, felt herself shrink back in fear and gave a small nod. He released her and she backed away stumbling upon the bed. Without saying another word, he walked away from her, picking up his torn invisibility cloak and disappeared through the door.

Ginny sighed loudly as she allowed her emotions to run over her body freely. The sensation of them was so intense that Ginny felt her heart give little jumps. He was just as she had remembered him, only that now he seemed even more interested in her than when in the Chamber of Secrets. She hadn't failed to notice the lustful gaze he gave her as he looked at her on his bed, blood dripping from her arm. What am I going to do? Ginny thought exasperated. He was so handsome and she could suppress the feelings that surfaced whenever she thought of him in that way. Those feeling were supposed to be buried, never to be dug out again but it seemed like fate had another plan in mind for her.

She managed to remove herself from the blood soaked bed and make her way to the bathroom. The magical chain allowed her to move in and out pf the bathroom freely without any interference. She went inside the bathroom and looked around before starting to remove her clothing. He had mentioned before that this was his bedroom so Ginny wasn't as surprised when she glanced about the spacious bathroom. The Prefect bathroom back at Hogwarts would have been considered small compared to this one. The bathing pool was at least five times bigger than the Prefect one and the counter sustaining two skins stretched out carved completely out of expensive white marble along the opposite wall of the bathing pool. The taps of the bathing pool were made out of solid gold, decorated with thousands of small emeralds that were attached to the taps in a snake-like design. She barely took account of the large shower as she stripped off her clothing and dived in the deep bathing pool. She felt the same peace she had on her balcony as the water rushed through her hair and over body. When she resurfaced she breath in a large mouthful of air and smiled contently. The water was relatively cold so she went over to the taps and turned them on. A small fairy came out and asked Ginny how she would like her bath. Virginia gave strict instructions to have the water hot but not extremely and she also asked for a wildflower scent to be included in the water. When asked if she wanted foamy or smooth, Ginny choose smooth, thinking of swimming a few laps before getting out a dressing up.

Before she knew it, she was enjoying herself swimming, Tom Riddle forgotten...at least for the moment.

~*~*~

The house was quiet all throughout. Ginny currently resided on top of the freshly changed bed sheets in Tom's room, bored to death. It had been over an hour since she had gotten out of the bath, ate and finished dressing. She had chosen a simple white gown that ended shortly just a little below her knees. The sleeves of the dress were cut of where the shoulder met the arm and only joined at the base of her underarm. The material of the sleeves was quite different from the silk of the dress but alike in many strange and puzzling ways. It was a soft white, transparent and made of what seemed very pure silk. It was softer than any silk she had ever touched and Ginny believed softer than even Angel feathers. She had pulled her hair in a tight half bun, leaving some soft curls to frame her back and some to cup her face lovingly. She sighed again and laid her head carefully onto the pillow, a strange sort of slumber claiming her sense.

When Tom came into the room later on that evening or rather night, he found Ginny still soundlessly asleep on the left side of the bed, curled into a small ball. He drew close to her face to inspect if she was indeed sleeping or faking it. Upon closer view, he noted that his princess was fast asleep...of course her not so lady-like snores helped too. He sighed and straightened, going over to his dresser to change into some night clothes. When he was done selecting his night garments he quietly slipped into the bathroom and splashed some cold water onto his face. Grabbing a nearby towel, he dried his face and changed into his night stuff. He wore only a pair of black silk pyjama pants that matched the intense colour of his hair and revealed his sexy and hairless chest. When he returned to his room, he remade the fire with a quick spell and after concealing his wand in a book so Ginny might not find it in case she awoke before him, covered Ginny with the green sheets and slipped in the bed to join her. Draping an arm over her slender waist he felt her stir a little against him then settle back into his arms, leaning against his chest. A soft and seductive smell of wildflowers attacked his senses and upon closer sniffing of, to be exact, Virginia's hair he found the source of the wonderful smell. He smiled and placed his head on the crook of her neck, imagining her reaction in the morning if he was still sleeping when she came to.