You Never Left

I wait in the shadows for someone. Anyone to come up and speak the password.. I check my pocket watch - it was almost curfew. I might be too late - but no. Someone comes now. A nervous looking boy comes up to the portrait and speaks the words: "Peaches and cream," he says, and enters. I enter behind him, unnoticed. I don't need a cloak to be invisible.

I find my way up to the Sixth Year girls' dormitories. I enter and see four empty beds, and Ginny. The bed farthest from the door, closest to the blank wall. She is sitting up on her bed, staring at the wall in front of her. She hears the door open, but she does not look up, assuming it to be one of her roommates, none of whom understand her, know her inner turmoil.

"Hello, Ginny," I say approaching her bed and sitting at the foot of it.

She stares at me, gasps. "Tom!" Arms are thrown around my neck, a head buried in my shoulder. I encircle one arm around her waist, stroke her fiery hair with my free hand.

"Oh, Tom, I thought you were dead! I missed you so much! Why...How are you here? Harry...Didn't he kill you? In the Chamber of Secrets?" She lifts her head from my shoulder, looks at me inquisitively.

"I found a new way to come back," I say to her, smiling gently. She smiles back at me.

"Tom, I missed you so much. You've no idea..."

Her voice trails off as I lean her back, exposing her pale, perfect neck. I lower my head and kiss it, sucking and biting gently on her creamy flesh. She tastes of cinnamon and milky, sugary tea.

"What are you doing?"

A long-forgotten voice in the back of my mind hisses at me.

"Seducing a silly, 16-year-old girl? You should have killed her when you had the chance."

I narrow my eyes, willing the voice silent. I do not care about killing right now. Not now. Not in this form. Not with Ginny.

I finally lift my head from her neck and stare into her eyes.

"Tom, have you come back for real?"

"Yes, Ginny, I have. And I want to make you happy. I'll buy you the world to see you smile."

She blushes, unused to hearing such flattery.

"I missed you so much."

"I know, love. I'm so sorry I had to leave you."

And suddenly she laughs. A cold, harsh, bitter laugh, one that I recognize from what I was, what I am, what I will become - Voldemort, the most powerful wizard that ever was. A laugh fitting for the wizard who will purge the world of unclean blood, horribly inappropriate for a sixteen-year-old girl.

"Leave me? Tom, you never left me. Ever since that day I first found you in that diary, you never left me. After Harry defeated you in the Chamber of Secrets, you stayed in my memory. I saw you standing in the library, eating in the Great Hall, smiling at me in the corridors. You haunted my dreams, Tom. You made my life a living hell. Every moment of my life, you were there, taunting me, teasing me with what I couldn't have. Well, no more. I won't let you come back."

I look at her and suddenly notice the cold pain behind her velvety brown eyes, glowing orbs of sweet kindness that have been tainted with cruel harshness.

For the first time, I realize she's holding her want. If I really wanted to, I could stop her, but something is preventing me from acting.

"Good-bye, Tom," she says, and then those words - the last I'll ever hear.

"Avada Kedavra."

There is a blinding flash of green and the world turns black. And the last sound I hear before my body hits the ground is her laughter, resounding in the stone chamber.