Crimson Ink

"Ginny! Ginny! Don’t be dead! Please don’t be dead!"

Ginny heard someone calling her name in the distance and tried to open her eyes, only she found she couldn’t. In her mind’s eye, she saw Harry kneeling over her, shaking her gently. She saw the black-haired boy emerge from the shadows.

"She won’t wake…"

"No Harry!" she wanted to shout. "He’s dangerous! Get away from him! Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine, just leave, he’ll kill you!"

But of course, she was unconscious.

She saw Tom’s figure, blurred lightly around the edges, shining with light. She saw him stare at Harry, never taking his eyes away.

"Are you a ghost?"

"A memory. Preserved in a diary for fifty years."

She saw Harry attempt to lift her, saw his hands raising her head, and half-wished that she could have been awake enough to feel it. Why did the one time that Harry finally paid attention to her have to be when she was dead to all the world?

She saw Tom walk forwards, as quick as a flash, and lift Harry’s wand from the floor. She saw his spidery fingers twirling it, a hint of a smile on his face. She saw Harry approach him in alarm, trying to explain what Tom already knew.

And she saw Tom, in return, explaining the whole thing.

"Well, that’s and interesting question. And quite a long story. I suppose the real reason Ginny Weasley’s like this is because she opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger."

"What are you talking about?"

"The diary. My diary. Little Ginny’s been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes: how her brothers tease her, how she had to come to school with secondhand robes and books, how she didn’t think famous, good, great Harry Potter would ever like her…"

"No!" Ginny wanted to scream. She could feel the hot tears welling up in her eyes. "Don’t tell him! Stop telling him! You said you wouldn’t ever tell, said you would always keep my secrets locked up forever!"

"It’s very boring, having to listen to the silly troubles of an eleven-year-old girl," he went on. "But I was patient. I wrote back, I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny simply loved me. No one’s ever understood me like you, Tom…I’m so glad I’ve got this diary to confided in…It’s like having a friend I can carry round in my pocket…"

"If I say it myself, Harry, I’ve always been able to charm the people I needed. So Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted. I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Power enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her…"

"No!" she wailed, unable to hold it anymore. She knew they couldn’t exactly hear her, but it didn’t matter. "Shut up! Stop it! It’s not true, it can’t be true! You can’t actually feel that way…" She broke down in * heart-wrenching sobs that made her whole body shake. "No…how could you be so cruel…You said you would never tell…I trusted you…"

And in the world of the living, Tom felt her screams fly straight to his heart.

~

Ginny was dreaming.

She knew it had to be a dream because she had never experienced anything so chaotic in all her life, and she doubted that she ever would.

She was in a city, a Muggle city by the looks of it, but she hadn’t a clue which one. Buildings towered over her, buildings of stone and brick and concrete. Their walls were coated in thick layers of dust and grime and the atmosphere was thick with ash and soot and pollution. She couldn’t make out the blue of the sky through all contamination, couldn’t see the puffy white clouds she loved.

Above, she could hear the noisy clamor of airplanes, overlapped with the horns and engines of the automobiles on the streets. She stepped forward and one nearly ran her over, swerving at the last second to miss her. She quickly stepped back, her heartbeat accelerated at the close call. The moaning of the car horn screeched after her, along with the angry screams of the driver.

A loud wailing siren suddenly pierced the air, and along with it, all the people on the street froze. Time seemed to stop as she found herself studying their panicked faces, the way they all seemed so much more alert. And then they were all moving again, even faster than before, rushing away from the noise, away from the turmoil. She heard the clicking of high heels on the pavement, the screeching of tires on the road.

Someone rammed into her and she felt herself fall forwards into a puddle on the road. The muddy water drenched her clothing and she could make out faint swirls of gasoline.

And that was when she saw him. She didn’t know how she could have missed him before; it was so obvious. They were the only two people in this crazy city who didn’t seem to have anywhere to go.

Directly across from her, a little boy sat on the cement steps of a brick building, gazing solemnly at her, studying her, with bright blue eyes. His hair was midnight black, hastily shoved under a ratty brown hat. His clothing was of the same colour, and strewn with tears and patches. His tearstains formed two streaks of white on his otherwise sooty face, marble white skin stained with ashes.

His eyes spoke to her, although he was just staring vaguely. We are alike, you and me, we have seen things no other has seen, felt things none other has felt, they said, and Ginny felt a shiver go down her spine.

He saw her staring back at him and his lips moved to form two simple words. "Help me," he whispered, and although she felt a world away, separated by the barrier of the screaming traffic and hurrying population, she heard his words, crystal clear in her ears. She felt his agony, his despair, his helplessness at being a child in a world of adults and she knew somehow that she felt the same. She knew it was Tom, but somehow it wasn’t, this boy was an innocent. She reached out to him, his words still reverberating in her head…

And that was when she woke up.

~

Slowly, she felt the feeling return to her limbs, and she almost wished that it wasn’t happening. The pain of the pebbles digging into her back was almost too much to bear. Wincing, she tried to roll over, just enough to lift her body from the floor. She hadn’t realized it was so cold.

She became aware of a slithering in the room, a creature dashing from shadow to shadow. As her vision became clearer, she saw that it was the Basilisk that Tom had been telling her about, and that it was chasing Harry.

She saw a phoenix dive towards its eyes, puncturing them with its beak. She saw the Basilisk scream in agony, as close to a scream as a snake could make anyway, and make a blind lunge towards what it thought was Harry.

She was sitting up fully now, but nobody noticed, they were all far too busy with their own affairs.

She heard Tom’s screams ring throughout the Chamber. "No! Leave the bird! Leave the bird! The boy is behind you! You can still smell him! Kill him!"

She saw the Basilisk fly true to its mark, its fang sank deep into Harry’s elbow, and she felt a deep despair. It couldn’t end like this. Harry couldn’t die.

Then she realized that it could end one of two ways, either Tom could die, or Harry could die, and she wasn’t sure who she wanted to win anymore. Sure, Tom had done some horrible things to her, stolen her childhood and her trust, betrayed her a million times over, but he was still her Tom, and somewhere, she still loved him. Besides, she couldn’t get that image out of her head, the one of him as a child, sitting on the steps crying, as lonely and innocent as anything, before the world had taken him, and plunged him into the depths of shadow, forever corrupting his soul.

But she didn’t want Harry to die either.

"So ends the famous Harry Potter," said Tom. "Alone in the Chamber of Secrets, forsaken by his friends, defeated at last by the Dark Lord he so unwisely challenged. You’ll be back with your dear Mudblood mother soon, Harry…She bought you twelve years of borrowed time…but Lord Voldemort got you in the end, as you knew he must."

But he wasn’t dying. He was rising again, slowly, but he was rising, she saw his arm move and the wound slowly close.

So Harry wasn’t going to die. But what about Tom?

She saw Fawkes fly overhead, saw him drop something in Harry’s lap, and suddenly she knew what Fawkes meant him to do. She shot up like a bolt, her feet moving of their own accord, dodging the still body of the Basilisk. Her arm shot down, body bending over to adjust, picking up a slab of granite that had fallen on the floor. It was heavier than she realized, and slowed her down slightly, but she still had the element of surprise.

And Harry was very surprised. As Fawkes screeched up above, warningly, Harry lifted his head, eyes widening as he saw her approaching. His face broke into a happy smile, through all the blood and slime. "Ginny!" he cried. "You’re not dea-"

That was all he got to before he crumpled to the ground. Ginny had swung her arm upward with superhuman strength and caught him right in the side of the head with the stone she had picked up. She collapsed right on top of him with the force of her swing, her protesting legs giving out under her. The weight had been too much for her, especially since she had just awakened.

Her robes were stained with blood. She sat, eyes half closed, shivering before she realized it wasn’t her blood, no, it was coming from the wound she had created on Harry’s head. She shuddered even more, and hugged her knees, retreating into herself, trying to escape from the horror of what she had just done.

She felt Tom’s hand grab her collar and drag her up from the floor roughly. She found herself staring into his face, and she nearly fell over again with relief. The feeling stopped, however, when she saw that he was glaring at her angrily.

"What the hell did you do that for?" he demanded, throwing her backwards. Her hand flew to her neck, gently rubbing the sore spot he had created. "I had him where I wanted him! You’ve ruined everything!"

The tears came again. Didn’t he understand what had been about to happen? Didn’t he realize what she had risked so that she could save him?

"I’ve ruined everything?" she said quietly, gathering her thoughts.

"Yes!" he ranted, throwing his hands up furiously in the air. He ran them through his hair, making it stand up on end. If she hadn’t been so upset, Ginny would have laughed. "I could have killed him!"

"More like he would have killed you," she retorted.

Tom stopped in mid-step. "Excuse me?"

She got up from her heap on the floor, stealing a glance at Harry. He was still lying on the floor, unmoving. Fawkes seemed to have disappeared.

"Didn’t you see it?" she asked, advancing towards Tom. "Or were you too caught up in dreams of your success? He was going to kill you. He had the diary in his lap, the Basilisk fang right beside him. How long d’you think it would’ve taken him to figure out that all he had to do was drive that fang right through your little black book?"

"Knowing what a dunce Potter is, quite a while," Tom replied, but he didn’t look so angry anymore, more thoughtful.

"I don’t know why I did that," she muttered, annoyed. "I should have let him kill you." She walked slowly over to Harry and sat down beside him, lifting away his damp hair to get a better look at the wound. Wincing at the size of the gash, she ripped a strip of cloth from her robes and wrapped it around his head, to stop the bleeding.

Moments passed before she sensed a presence beside her. "You saved me," came the awed voice slowly, the body sinking down beside her. "Why?"

"I don’t know," she said. Her head ached at the thought of all the trouble she had caused. "I should have just let you die. Then everything would have been okay again."

He ignored her last comment. "But you didn’t," he said quietly, not quite sounding like his old self. "Just like I didn’t hit you with the spell hard enough to kill you. Why?"

"I don’t know!" she cried. "It’s not like I know everything in the world! Why do you keep asking me? I don’t know why I did it!"

"I always knew why I did things," came his quiet reply. "Except for this. And I don’t like it."

"Well, I’m not you," she murmured.

"I know."

"So what are we going to do now?"

"You’re the one who did this. What was your original plan?"

"Didn’t have one. Just had to make sure you…didn’t die."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"You do know I’m going to try and kill him again."

"I know."

"And how do you feel about that?"

"I don’t know."

"Really? I thought, since you liked him and all-"

"I’d rather not talk about it."

"Why?"

"You betrayed me, Tom! You said you wouldn’t ever tell, and there you were, flaunting all my private thoughts out to the world. To the person that mattered most. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I hate you right now."

He opened his mouth to speak, then paused, rethinking it. "Sweetie…"

"Don’t ‘sweetie’ me," she said, the tears flooding to her eyes. "I know you don’t mean it. Words are just play to you. You never stop to think how badly you might hurt someone."

He stared at her, eyes large and solemn, without a trace of their usual malice. "Ginny…" he tried again.

She sighed. "Go away Tom. Into your diary or something. Just leave me alone. I don’t ever want to see you again."

And to Ginny’s surprise, he obeyed.

~

When Harry came to minutes later, Ginny had already hidden the diary in her sleeve. "Ginny!" he cried happily, sitting up to greet her. He winced at the sudden pain in his head and she paled, knowing she had caused him that pain. "You’re okay!" he finished weakly, nearly falling as he tried to stand up.

She caught him before he hit the floor. "You did it Harry," she whispered, trying to play her part. She drew a gasp and her hands flew to her face, pretending to cry. "Harry – oh, Harry – I tried to tell you at b-breakfast, but I c-couldn’t say it in front of Percy. It was me, Harry – but I – I s-swear I d-didn’t mean to – R-Riddle made me-" she stopped herself just in time from calling him Tom, "-he took me over – and – how did you kill that – that thing? When I woke up, you were killing him – there was so much blood – and then he just sort of disintegrated." She paused, catching her breath. "Oh Harry, you were so brave!"

She hoped it sounded believable. Hopefully, Harry didn’t know enough about her to know that she never blubbered, ever, and if he did, she hoped the situation would account for it. Naturally, she had made up some details; she couldn’t bear to tell him what had actually happened.

"I did?" he asked, rather bewildered, taking in his surroundings. His eyes took in the still body of the Basilisk, and Fawkes still circling above their heads. He did, however, find the absence of a certain something.

"Where’s the diary?" he asked, eyes darting about frantically. "We’ve got to find it; it’s dangerous, he could still be alive!"

Ginny rested her hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him, and his head whirled around to stare at her, eyes daring to hope.

She sighed. "It’s gone," she lied, feeling the little black book make a bulge in her sleeve. She was almost certain that he could see it. "It disappeared when he did."

~

As she had guessed, her parents were less than happy.

"W-what’s that?" stammered Mr. Weasley. "You Know Who? En-enchant Ginny? But Ginny’s not…Ginny hasn’t been…has she?"

Of course I have, thought Ginny with a sigh. How else d’you think this could’ve happened. Really. If you just gave it a moment of thought, you’d be able to see the answer.

"He was using a diary," explained Harry. "He wrote in it when he was sixteen." He looked downwards, abashed. "I don’t have it…it disappeared when he did…"

As he said this, Dumbledore gave Ginny a long look over the rims of his half-moon glasses. Ginny averted her eyes, not meeting his gaze. Could he know? But that was impossible…he couldn’t…she had hidden it so well.

"Brilliant," said Dumbledore softly, tearing his eyes away from her. She sighed with relief at no longer being under the scrutiny of his gaze. "Of course, he was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen."

Her parents looked at each other, obviously perplexed.

"Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle," continued Dumbledore. "I taught him myself, fifty years ago, at Hogwarts. He disappeared after leaving the school…traveled far and wide…sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable. Hardly anyone connected Lord Voldemort with the clever, handsome boy who was once Head Boy here."

"But Ginny," said her mother, and Ginny sighed again at her mother’s ability to ignore things she didn’t want to believe," what’s our Ginny got to do with – with – him?"

At least he understood me loads better than you ever will, she thought, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the tears were real. "His d-diary!" she sobbed, playing the hysterical victim once again. "I’ve b-been writing in it, and he’s been w-writing back all year-"

"Ginny!" cried her father. "Haven’t I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think of itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain. Why didn’t you show that diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that, it was clearly full of dark magic!"

Because then you would’ve taken him away from me, and I would’ve never been able to forgive you for that.

"I d-didn’t know," she sobbed instead. "I found it inside one of the books Mum got me. I th-thought someone had just left it in there and forgotten about it…"

"Miss Weasley should go to the hospital wing straight away," interrupted Dumbledore and Ginny thanked him silently. "This has been a terrible ordeal for her. There will be no punishment. Older and wiser wizards than she have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort." He walked over to the door of his office and opened it. "Bed rest and perhaps a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up. You will find Madame Pomfrey is still awake. She’s just giving out Mandrake juice – I daresay the Basilisk’s victims will be waking up any moment."

At the words, the Basilisk, Ginny shivered. All she could think about was the stricken look on Tom’s face when he saw that his Basilisk had fallen.

Whispering quietly to each other, her parents led her out.

~

Ginny sank back into the soft white pillows, thoroughly exhausted. Her parents had hounded her with questions until she just about couldn’t take it anymore.

As soon as the door closed behind them, they had begun. How could you have done something so stupid? How could you have trusted that boy? Haven’t you learned anything from us? Have we really taught you that badly?

And Ginny had answered them silently in her head.

"Why didn’t you tell us?"

Because you would have taken him away.

"We could have helped you."

How? By taking the only one who understands me?

"And then you wouldn’t be in so much trouble now."

What trouble are you talking about? Dumbledore isn’t mad. Even he’s more understanding than you are. Tom is gone…for now, at least. The Basilisk is dead. And Harry’s the hero, as everyone expects him to be. And I’ve gotten rid of that stupid Lockhart as part of the bargain too.

"I don’t know what we’re going to with you, Ginny."

Who says you need to do anything? I’m perfectly happy with myself. Shouldn’t you be too?

"Just…your brothers were never like this."

Oh, weren’t they? What about when Fred and George turned Ron’s teddy bear into a spider? Or when Charlie ran off to Romania without telling you? Or when Ron crashed the Ford Anglia into the Whomping Willow? Or even Percy, he’s sneaking off to have secret snogs with his girlfriend, and you haven’t the slightest clue about it. I could list a thousand more examples.

"At least, they never did anything this horrible."

If you’re saying that, then you obviously don’t know all the things they did. I’d call them horrible. Like some of the twins’ jokes…more cruel than funny. You don’t know how many letters home they’ve managed to stop.

"And you’re a girl, you’re supposed to be well behaved."

That’s an awful sexist thing to say, Mum.

"People will think it’s bad parenting."

What makes you think it’s not?

Finally, Madame Pomfrey had shooed them out, saying Ginny needed her rest. And now, she stared at the pasty white ceiling, an empty mug of hot chocolate and a half-eaten chocolate bar on the table.

She looked up as she heard the door squeak open. Dumbledore entered, holding something in his hands.

"How are you faring, Miss Weasley?" he asked, taking a seat beside her.

"Good," she managed weakly, wondering what he was doing here. "Are Ron and Harry in trouble?"

He chuckled lightly at her distress. "No," he answered. "In fact, far from it. They have been justly rewarded for their actions."

"Oh. That’s good."

"And you, Miss Weasley?"

"And me what?"

"What do you think should be the consequence for your actions?"

"I-I don’t know," she stammered desperately. He knows, he has to know! Why would he be asking me if he didn’t? Oh…that "There will be no punishment" thing was all an act! I’ll be expelled for sure…and they’ll all hate me forever…

"In this world, our decisions define everything, Miss Weasley" he said. He retrieved something from the velvet bag he had been holding and handed it to her. It was made of glass, as round as a crystal ball, with intricate silver lines of thread woven around the base.

"What is it?" she asked, testing its weight.

"It allows you to try the paths not taken. It shows you the Might-Have-Beens. I give it to you not so you will regret your choices, Miss Weasley, but so you can be wizened by the knowledge."

He got up, and gave her another grave look. "Use it well. And I hope that you get well soon."

Ginny just stared after him as he walked out the door.