Ater Atra Atrum

Ater Atra Atrum

By TMF

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"And if the dam breaks open many years too soon,
And if there is no room upon the hill,
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too,
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon."

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Love, passion, pleasure, amour; danger, excitement, adrenaline. To sow the seeds of such desires into one's psyche is to gain ultimate control over them. We are built by them, created by their elements. They are what can bind us together, and what can destroy us in the same way.

I have learned this lesson first hand.

One would scorn the idea of an eleven-year-old child of understanding, let alone becoming programmed by, the rudiments of fierce, aching passion. They are wrong, for they are burned into our nature at birth.

Again, a lesson I have learned myself.

But I won't get into the psychology of it; I am no philosopher. The sheer perverse and derogatory nature that manipulation can be is something no one with a shred of humanity wants to explore.

"I will always care for you Ginny Weasley," he told me, his serene features so like Harry's and at the same time so subtly different from the Boy Who Lived. Now I know what that subtlety in Tom was: Brilliant, cunning, illusive evil. But what I know now does not alter the past. Rather, it transforms it into a stretched, twisted vision of the same kind of grotesquery you see in the worst of nightmares.

Because now I realize he never actually said he loved me.

We first met face-to-face on Halloween night, and it was the first time I realized I was dealing with more that just a sympathetic diary. My father always told us, "Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where its brain is." But I knew where its brain was. What I didn't know was its intentions.

I looked into his eyes, wonderfully dark brown orbs flecked with moss green and gold that I will not forget, and he looked back at me. "I cannot yet touch you," he told me softly, his voice a calm, all-knowing lilt of the true intellectual. Unable to believe him (he was so close to me, and I swear I could feel his breath on my face), I reached up my hand and attempted to cup his pale cheek in the palm of my trembling hand. He was right; my fingers slid through his skin like a thick mist that seemed to try and swallow my hand whole. His cheek rippled back into place, smooth and flawless, as I pulled my hand away.

"See?" Tom said, smiling slightly. "We are in my diary, my memory. You didn't exist in my past, so you can't touch me physically."

I looked up at him, back into his eyes. "What did you mean by 'yet'?"

His eyebrows furrowed slightly. "Come again?"

"You said 'I cannot yet touch you.' What did you mean?"

"Oh," he said, his brows slackening back into the calm unreadable expression I became so accustomed to. "You'll see."

His answer perplexed me, but I didn't think anything of it, because his answers always perplexed me. In fact, I anticipated the time that I would actually be able to feel Tom's touch.

"Close your eyes," Tom instructed gently. I did without question and stood there, wondering with bated breath what Tom was going to do, what he could do. After a few seconds of nothing, I got impatient and opened by eyes.

Tom wasn't there.

"Tom? Where are you?" I asked out loud, preparing to search the room for him, when I heard his voice:

"No, don't move."

I looked around wildly, peering under the four-poster beds of Tom's and his roommates, behind dressers and trunks. No Tom.

"Look down."

I obeyed and nearly screamed in shock to find Tom's arm protruding from my stomach, somewhere in the region of my navel. I looked up, expecting to see Tom's neck sticking out of my head, but his head was nowhere to be seen. His arm, too, had disappeared back into my body.

"Where are..."

"I'm inside of you," Tom's voice said simply. "Don't speak. I'm not strong enough to create an instantaneous affect, and I need to concentrate." As he spoke, a dull warmth began to spread throughout my body, as if unknown hands were exploring every dip and curve of me. My breath quickened with nervousness as the hands trailed from the inner cup of my belly button downward towards...

"Tom, what are you doing?" I asked faintly.

"For months, you have been pouring yourself into me," his voice explained calmly. "Now, I must pay you back."

I was about to asked what he was talking about, when suddenly the dungeon-like room of Tom's dormitory began to dissolve into nothingness. A feeling of immeasurable bliss washed over me, not unlike the feeling of being under the Imperius Curse. I closed my eyes and smiled and began to dream about things, pleasant things that

When I woke up, I found myself in lying in my bed. It was dark outside, and I could hear Tiffany Lundgren snoring loudly on the other side of the dormitory. I rubbed my eyes, only to find my hands covered in a viscous layer of red liquid.

I wish I could say I detected evil at the sight of blood on my hand. But I can't. After I convinced myself it was just an odd kind of paint or something, I continued to pour my soul--literally--into Tom, and he dumped himself back into me. The attacks on fellow students increased and decreased as my interactions with Tom increased and decreased. Tom knew he had me under his spell, his amazing charm.

It's disturbing to think about, honestly.

But even now, as I sit curled into the corner of my compartment on the Hogwarts Express, watching Ron, Harry, and Hermione laugh and joke with the twins, as if nothing horrible had just happened... as if they hadn't just saved my life...

Harry... he's a concept I dare not understand.... He is leaning forward now, discussing Quidditch avidly with Ron and the twins, while Hermione rolls her eyes from behind a thick, leather-bound tome and occasionally offers up a comment or two. He reminds me of Tom, but there's something... warmer. Maybe it's the vibrant green eyes that take life in as if it will disappear at any moment, maybe it's that lightning-shaped scar...

I really don't know.

I've been hearing stories about him since I was born. For years, he had spawned daydreams in my head... But he was nothing I expected, nothing at all. He's no golden-haired Gilderoy Lockhart hunk. He's just a short, skinny, bespectacled boy named Harry Potter.

"Ginny? Are you alright?"

I jerk up from my reverie and gaze into those emerald eyes. I smile genially and shift positions absently. "Yeah, I'm fine."

He grins, nods and returns to his conversation. Traces of a smile still on my face, I return to watching their discussion, thinking to myself:

I wonder if we could ever really be?