Summary: You've had a taste now, lover. And its bitterness was to your liking. Oneshot.

Tom/Ginny. Because poison never tasted so sweet. And because I can't stop with the Gin n'Tonic fics already.

V E N O M

I

1993

The first time she saw him again was on the night of All Hallows, with the spectres at the feast.

Yet he was not the elusive silvery mist of the other ghosts that drifted carelessly around the tables, nor was he the glimmering phantom that had risen from the diary in those final, dimly-remembered moments of imminent death. No, this was the boy of her ink-stained dreams, his devastating face as it had appeared in those pages (those pages she had once pressed her lips against), fleeting enough to feed her soul-destroying imaginings. The dark lovelocks fell over his white forehead exactly the way they had when he had leaned over her in the chamber (just close your eyes, Ginny, it will all be over soon). The cold darkness still crept into her nightmares, the chill water lapping at her weakening body as she lay in a state of numb transition, the cavernous echoes that might only have been his laughter. His long-fingered hand in hers as he sat beside her. Letting her lie there, letting her bleed, bleed, bleed.

Her goblet fell over with a clatter. Pumpkin juice trickled out in slow rivulets, warm and sticky, staining her fingers (remember how it felt, beloved, to have the hot blood spilling over your hands, to feel the bones snap beneath your innocent fingers) and she stumbled to her feet.

"What's up with you?" said Ron.

"Headache," she lied, though her head was pounding, he couldn't know it was from fear -

Feet slapping against the stone as she ran down the length of the great hall, ignoring the curious stares she was receiving from the other tables. She pushed her way past the double doors, heaving great breaths as she stumbled blindly down the corridors, the horrible familiarity of it sickening her. They had won - how could this be possible?

(How does victory taste now? Have you choked upon its meagre ashes?)

That inner voice was always Tom's voice, just as her nightmares were always Tom's face (but are they nightmares if you enjoyed them?)

They had won and she had been better, almost herself again. Most days she didn't even think about the Chamber or the diary. It was amazing how quickly people stopped asking questions if you just kept smiling. She had forced herself to forget the darkness beneath the school, to stop looking for Tom in every shadow and fight down the instinct to reach for a quill every time she had something on her mind.

She drew up for breath, gasping. The corridor was deserted. Darkness and fear lurking in every shadow. The foolishness of her actions hit her fully, then. Why had she not stayed in the hall with Harry and Dumbledore?

She whirled round -

"Leaving so soon?" Tom asked quietly.

He was leaning against the wall, his mouth curved into that half smile-unsmile. White skin and long bones. Black hair and blacker eyes. The flickering candelabras threw his angular shadow into huge proportions across the long corridor.

Ginny didn't run. Didn't scream. Just stood there and stared at him.

"Are you real?"

"Do you want me to be?" His voice was clear and soft. Just as she remembered. Just as she dreamed.

"Tom -"

She could never say that name again without shuddering, or feeling her heart convulse inside her chest. That one syllable was a symbol of everything she had ever yearned for and dreaded; all her shattered dreams and unrequited longings, all her tarnished innocence and hollow despair, all her blighted hopes and darkened dreams. All because of him. Tom. Her life had once been Quidditch and affectionate kisses and sweet summer mornings. Until she opened a book and wrote her soul away.

I do so love having you confide in me, Ginny… can I call you Ginny?… think of this diary as a friend… you can tell me anything… you are so bright, so pretty… this Harry Potter doesn't know what he is missing… friends do things for each other, Ginny, would you do something for me…?

This disobedience of yours grows tiresome… oh for goodness sake… crying again, are we?… was there ever a more pathetic excuse for a child… struggling is quite useless, Ginevra, so stop wasting my time or I will give you something to cry about… you irritating little brat, how I will relish killing you -

He smiled slightly. "Aren't you going to tell me to go away?"

"I've never been able to tell you what to do," she said.

His dark brows lifted a fraction. "That's probably the first sensible thing you've ever said."

"You're here to kill me, I suppose." The fact bothered her less than it should have.

Tom nodded as calmly as though they were discussing the weather. "You did elude me, Ginevra."

His use of her name made her shiver. Tom was staring down at his clasped hands, seemingly lost in thought. "No one," he whispered intently, "No one ever escaped me - and you, a mere child -" He lifted his gaze to her, almost wonderingly. "The Potter boy - he will pay too, of course."

Her lips framed terrified words. Not Harry - not Harry - please not Harry -

Her sweating, childish fingers fumbled in the deep pockets of her over-large robes, trying to find her wand… sweet wrappers… a quill… where was it?

She jumped as Tom started to laugh, the high, cold sound of it endlessly magnified, echoing off the walls that seemed to be pressing in on her -

"What, exactly, has made your trivial life worth living? You still remain the same stupid child that everybody overlooks because they cannot endure your tedious self-absorption." His mouth twisted. "Killing you would have practically been a kindness."

Ginny said nothing. She was shaking with hatred. Slowly, she drew her wand, but what on earth could she use against him? Did she know any spells?

His expression never lost that chilling equanimity, lit by the ghastly, slanting light of the wall sconces. "Put that thing down," he said contemptuously.

She did. Or maybe it just slipped from her nerveless fingers. Well, it was of no use now, lying discarded on the stone floor. She expected Tom to seize it or snap it in half, but he merely ignored it, stepping closer to her. He was still so much taller than her. She really was a child beside him.

"I'll scream," she breathed.

"You could," agreed Tom, "But you won't."

He continued to look at her evenly. He was solemn, calm and contained, more so than any boy she had ever met. Those old eyes in that young face. She had seen faces like that in the Egyptian tombs, carved from stone, unmoveable and unreadable, containing countless secrets of the ages. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair, Percy had said, but Ginny didn't understand what he meant by that.

She thought maybe now she did.

He gestured around him with a slender hand. In their sconces, the candles burned bright and hot. Flickering gold light causing monstrous shadows to crawl up the walls. "Tell me, Ginevra. Does this corridor seem at all… familiar? Of any particular significance to you?"

"No," she said, wondering what he was getting at.

Tom shook his head. "A pity. Is there anything you do remember? What about your tender last moments? Any fond memories? I cannot imagine you forgetting so easily, not when I was forced to endure your cringing company."

Memories? She did not remember those grey, blank days but had wandered in a trance, through endless whispers. But she remembered the cool darkness (and it remembers you, too).

"I don't remember." Almost a lie.

Closer now, leaning over her. She could smell ink and old parchment, and cold sweat beaded her forehead. She couldn't move.

"Then let me enlighten you." His soft voice an exhalation against her pallid cheek. "This is where it all began."

He stroked her face with cool fingertips before his grip tightened painfully. She squirmed, struggled against him. Images assaulted her. A cat hanging immobilised in this very corridor, water pooling across the stone floor, casting an eerie reflection of the petrified animal. A message written in words of blood. The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir beware. More images, like malachite waves surging upon the edges of her vulnerable mind. Hermione lying unmoving, her eyes blank and glassy and unseeing. Petrified bodies stretched out on white beds. Then falling, falling into the dark -

- and she was back there.

The cold was inside her green light everywhere. The chamber, the carven serpents appearing to her as though through a dim veil, all soft and blurred at the edges. Ink clotting in her hair as she lay fading, dying. Her bones ached, the water seeping into them. And all the while Tom stretched out beside her with a face like an angel. His rhythmic breathing beside her dwindling heartbeat. A book lay open beside her, and her thin, almost translucent hand reached out, slowly tracing over the writing, pages and pages of it, the same words over and over again -

Dear Tom dear Tom dear Tom dear Tom dear Tom dear Tom dear Tom DEAR TOM-

Ginny jerked away, the corridor rushing back into focus with nauseating speed. Tom was still holding her face in his hands. His intense scrutiny was unnerving.

"It happened, didn't it? I thought I could make you remember, but I had never actually tried -" His voice shook slightly with barely suppressed excitement.

She stared back at him, her mind reeling. Icy sweat trickled down her neck, beneath her school robes.

He released his hold and stepped away from her. Grateful for the space and air, Ginny pressed her palms against her forehead, feeling the pulse beating in her temples. She leaned her head back against the cold stone as she tried to stop the world from spinning. She swallowed a breath, fighting nausea. "How could you?"

"How could I what?"

"Do that. To those people -" (to me -)

There it was again, that old expression, arrogant and disdainful. "Not crying for once, Ginevra? That is a rarity."

She lifted her small chin, her dark gaze fixing his. "I promise you, Riddle - you'll never see me cry again."

He smiled, strangely, and his smile frightened her more than his anger.

"Why Ginevra, it seems you are growing up at last. I'll be sure remember that."

II

1994

Christmas Night, and the snow falling like white diamonds around her slender frame. The flakes settled in her red-gold hair like shards of crystal. She looked prettier than she ever had. In the distance, dancers weaved in and out of sight, the tinkling strains of music carried along the sharp, frost-bitten air. Quieter here, calmer. Ginny wrapped her arms around herself, caging the hectic fluttering of her heart. Away from the buzz and excitement, she could hear her own thoughts.

She pressed her lips together as the memory of boyish shyness and a solemn, anxious face rose in her mind. She felt excited, nervous, disappointed and elated all at once. Not as I had imagined it to be… but then, what was these days? Just because it hadn't been with - stop that.

She sighed and looked out over the grounds, shrouded in the gossamer pall of winter. The last vestiges of a dying world.

(Do you know how it felt… to die?)

That whisper seemed to come from inside herself, and all at once, the night had lost its sparkle. She stood still as a Christmas angel and her smile shattered like glass. Would she never be free of him?

"Why won't you leave me alone?" she asked aloud.

"Because you won't let me, Ginevra."

Then Ginny looked up, and there he was.

He was standing in front of her, white skin several shades paler than the snow swirling around them. She looked at his black hair, the classically elegant lines of his face, and hatred blurred with a longing so intense she could no longer tell which was which. She shook the snow from her ruddy curls and his eyes burned hungrily.

"You came back," she said.

"Of course. Did you really think I wouldn't?"

No. Because you'll never leave me. But the sharp terror of before had dissipated into a vague, uneasy fear beneath the skin (where he lived) that kept her pulse beating at an accelerated rate.

"What do you want?" she asked dully.

Tom merely looked at her, and smiled. "The dress suits you, Ginevra."

She instantly vowed never to wear it again. He moved easily towards her, the sleek lines of his black cloak swirling slightly. Smooth and liquid and compelling. She backed up a few steps until her back hit the icy railing.

"Someone will see."

"See what?" Then he paused, his eyes glinting. "Or is it that you're afraid to be caught with two boys in one evening?"

She could only stare at him, her mouth falling open slightly. He knows - how does he know?

The evening returned to her in rush… nervous laughter, giddy from endless spinning and crystal flutes of punch, her small hand enclosed by a larger, warmer one… Michael steering her under the mistletoe, his pale, handsome face wreathed in dark shadows, for a moment looking almost like -

Tom's expression hardened. "How did you like kiss, Ginevra? Did it please you? Did he look into your eyes and whisper sweet endearments?"

Ginny shivered and drew her arms around herself. He had no right to ask her these things. They were personal, private. She had no wish for him to pry into her life with long, cruel fingers, corrupting her seasonal, magical fairytale of a night (though she had stopped believing in fairytales a long time ago). And Michael was… nice. Good-looking, too. Dark-haired and dark-eyed. She wondered what that meant. But still there was something wanting in him (not tall enough, not pale enough, not cruel enough). But Ginny would never admit this, not even to herself. If she couldn't have Harry (Tom), then perhaps Michael was the next best thing.

"You always used to tell me how you would like to kiss a boy," Tom remarked musingly. "Did it live up to your expectations?"

"Why do you care?" she demanded bitterly. "It's not like anything I wrote ever mattered to you -"

"Oh, it mattered. Fifty years I slept and you so thoughtfully told me how the world had changed in my absence. Yes, I seem to recall you providing me some very valuable information."

The reminder of her stupidity caused humiliated blood to burn in her cheeks. She had told him so much, Harry, Voldemort, Dumbledore, the Wizarding World -

"And you didn't answer my question."

The icy air danced along her bare shoulders. He stood before her, deceptively warm, deceptively real. She terribly feared that if he opened his arms she would run into them. And so she would die, willing prey to the striking serpent.

"You'd better go, Tom," she said, forcing her voice not to tremble. "Michael's meeting me, he'll be here any minute -"

His narrow shoulders were shaking violently, at first she thought he was shivering with extreme cold, but then she realised he was laughing. "You liar," he said. "Do you expect me to believe that?"

"It doesn't matter. Half the school's out tonight. Someone's bound to come along soon."

"What of it? Do you really think I couldn't make you turn your wand on anyone who interrupted us? That I couldn't force you to - Ginevra, stay put. I am not finished with you yet."

She did not dare disobey him. A part of her still wanted to run, back to the clamouring voices and jarring symphonies, to leave nothing but glassy tears and burning tracks in the snow. But it was a very small part, remote and distant from herself. There was still fear, somewhere, but it did not touch her. She was numb with cold.

His quiet voice carried a tenor of subtle cruelty. "You blushed so sweetly, Ginevra. He thinks you so innocent." That delicate mouth hardened. "Will he still think so when he chokes upon his own blood and his eyes are cold and dead? For he has dared to lay his hands upon that which is mine."

"You sound almost jealous," she said. And perhaps, in his own twisted way, he was.

Tom's eyes fixed on hers, like dark wounds in his pale face. "You should know better by now."

Oh, she knew. He had done a very efficient job of shattering all her illusions. The stars were dazzlingly white, burning her eyes. Blinded, she did not move as he came closer still, and suddenly she was no longer numb.

The snow light shivered around them. She was gossamer and ice, so cold that even Tom seemed warm by comparison. But was there any warmth in those marble veins? Or was it merely something else she had dreamed into him? It would be like kissing a statue, she thought, and shuddered, for it had been a long time (a whole other person ago) since she had daydreamed of kissing him. The Tom that had never existed save in her own mind.

"Look at me."

She stared up into the youthful, arrogant face, the blue-veined lids of his eyes (so cold). Unfeeling as winter ice. Yet she could feel the heat radiating from his body close to hers. The snow streamed down her hair like crystalline tears.

"You once said I was the most handsome boy you'd ever met." The corners of his mouth were touched with a faint smile. "Is that still true?"

Ginny looked away.

"I'll take that as a yes."

He bent down to kiss her. His cool hands burned her skin. But it was not a comforting warmth, rather the searing heat of fever that passed through her in blades of shivering, emerald-veined fire. But she did not pull away. Better to burn than be drowned.

Ginny realised then, that she had never kissed Michael. The sweet, tentative touch of his lips on hers could never be called a kiss. She knew that now. She knew that, because Michael had never trapped her hungrily against him, never consumed her and destroyed her so entirely that she no longer knew her own name, knew nothing but the cruel completeness of his possession.

Not like Tom did.

The warmth easing her lips open, melting down her throat. Liquid venom insinuating its way through her veins in dark threads, effortlessly drawing her to him, falling into that sickeningly beloved embrace. This is how Harry felt, she reflected muggily, through a haze of delirium. This is how Harry must have felt when the Basilisk bit him. Because this, Tom's kiss, was death, and it was sweet. Her own brand of deadly poison. Slow, drugging, paralytic. The drowsy semi-consciousness of sleepwalking… but in sleepwalking there is no pain -

His hands tangled in her hair that spilled like scarlet serpents through his long fingers. He tugged at the curls, the sharp clarity of pain briefly cutting through the drowning darkness. The piercing bite of his teeth on her parted lips caused her to jerk in his arms and she felt him breathe a soft laugh against her mouth.

He let go of her almost roughly. Ginny stumbled, the railing catching her lower back painfully. She raised herself slowly; it was like coming up for air after drowning…

The winter air sliced her lungs like a knife as she tried to breathe - tried to think -

She licked her dry lips and tasted -

Blood?

Blinking the ice from her lashes, she looked up at him nervously.

His long eyes were filled with darkness and malice. For Tom's eyes, though lacking in humanity, were never empty. And within those depths, she glimpsed something else. Triumph.

She tried to move away but a cold hand moved against her vivid hair, drawing her back to him. Had any other boy forced himself past her personal boundaries, her Weasley temper would have flared up instantly. She tried to summon up the energy to feel anger, to aim a hex at him, but his kiss had left her drained and aching, as though some dark part of her soul mourned his absence. An emptiness, an abyss.

"Why?" she said, instead.

He looked at her contemplatively. "I just wanted to make sure you were still mine. And you are, Ginevra." His voice was quiet. "Never forget that."

III

1995

It was after that the dreams began.

Leaning over her, that narrow face with the coronet of black hair, dark eyes alive with shadows and blacker shadows. He swept his fingers over her shoulders in light, lithe movements, briefly caging the pulse that beat hard in her throat. His lips stirring the hair that lay damp across her pillow, his cool brow curving down to press against hers (did you think I could ever… leave you? You, who know me above all others?)

He pushed her back against the bed, his weight pinning her down. The sheets were cold as water (rippling) in the darkness that rolled over her. She stifled a sob (or was it a moan?) Yet she never fought him here, in the dreams. Pale hands sliding down the narrow contours of her waist, kissing away the tears that burned her cheeks. She looked up at him with brilliant, moist eyes, lashes quivering with loathing. Trapped in an eternal paralysis, as though she had drowned in green-lit water. Leaving all else behind but memory.

Sometimes, serpents twined around her legs. She tore the pillows to bloody ribbons, hate you, hate you, hate you. Tom shushed her, smoothed a hand down her trembling limbs. He angled his mouth over hers.

And so she fell, into darkness, into death.

(I am the voice that whispers to you in the darkness, the hunger you can never assuage)

Night after night she imbibed that poison, felt it twisting its way through her veins. She would have preferred the dreams of blood and broken bones. At least she could tell herself she had not enjoyed them.

When she was awake, she stared sullenly into mirrors and gilt surfaces and hardly knew herself. Yet in a strange inversion, she seemed to grow prettier by the day. Though it wasn't the soft, dimpled prettiness of the summer-blushed little girl she once was, but a harder, hectic beauty, her small face arresting with its pointed chin and sharp cheekbones and dark eyes that stared out so defiantly. Sometimes Ginny wondered what she might have looked like had she never known Tom.

But she had always known Tom. He ran black through her veins. Cut her and ink would spill from her arteries.

(I made you what you are, Ginevra. You don't know yourself without me.)

Perhaps that was why, in her waking hours, she made such an effort. She had consciously made a decision not to be that girl. The weak, pliant child that could be so easily used, so easily broken. The blushing, awkward, stammering child that could not summon two sentences in Harry's presence.

She became louder. She laughed and teased, was abrasive and obnoxious. Ron was an easy target, as sensitive as she herself had been (once upon a time) and she could not deny a certain stinging satisfaction in watching his ears turn scarlet, knowing that she could wound others so easily. It was easier with Percy gone. He was the only one who had ever looked closely, the only one who might have cared… well, good riddance to him. If he could leave her so easily, she could do very well without him. She didn't need him.

Sometimes she remembered to be nice. She stood up for people, hexed those who bullied her friends. She kept her friend's secrets (she was good at keeping secrets). Her passion for Quidditch - something she had not given a thought to since she was about nine or ten - resurfaced. When rushing through the air, the adrenaline firing her blood, it was easy to forget… other things.

It became almost a game. Practising that swish of her long red hair in the mirror, perfecting her laugh with its jarring combination of infectious mirth and cutting mockery. The twins seemed to like her better for it. She answered back to her professors, not blind to the admiring looks cast by her classmates. People took notice of her, started to pay attention. Boys who were not aware of her existence a few short months ago now followed her with their eyes, making up thinly-veiled pretexts to come and talk to her.

She was so good at it. She had them all fooled.

Somewhere, not too far away, Tom was laughing.

(Surprisingly easy, isn't it?)

"Shut up," she said aloud to the empty dormitory. "I never wanted it to be like this."

(No? Isn't this what you always wanted?)

"I only wanted -" She paused. What had she wanted (cold and mist and drowning darkness, take my hand and love me always). But she didn't want that. She had never wanted that. Not with Tom.

She hated him beyond thought, beyond reason. And recent events only sharpened her hatred. The Order gathered and she heard whispers and vague hints of Voldemort hiding in the shadows. Mysteries and disappearances and covert missions. The Prophet printing lies about Harry that made her blood boil. The Ministry might be wilfully blind to Voldemort's return but -

(But you're not surprised, are you, Ginevra? You knew that I could never stay gone)

The confusion, the twisted dichotomy of it haunted her, would give her no rest. Where did Voldemort end and Tom begin? Had it been the diary? Or before then?

One day she found herself in the girl's bathroom, gripping the sides of the shallow basin as she stared half-fascinated at the tiny etched serpent that gleamed silver in the elusive green light. Was this where the transformation had begun, a prefect standing in a water-lit chamber with a few softly spoken words of Parseltongue?

I still don't understand. How can you be him?

Ginny pushed her hair back from her face, pressing cold hands against her cheeks. She looked up into the mirror and saw him over her shoulder standing behind her, subtly illuminated by the moist light that shivered across the slick stone floor. Fear crawled down her spine. How long had he been watching her?

Her eyes narrowed in the shrouded ambiguity, tracing the graceful lines of his angular form. One long leg was crossed lazily over the other. There was still something boyish in his slender figure, horribly like Harry's, but where Harry was all nervous energy and youthful vitality, Tom's every movement was sinuous, graceful, deliberated.

He pushed himself from the wall and walked unhurriedly towards her, glancing around him with mild interest. "I'm surprised you came back here. Either you're brave or more stupid than I thought."

"He's back," she said without preamble. "You - I mean - your older self."

Tom shrugged, seemingly indifferent at the news. "That's hardly surprising. I took measures to ensure that I could not be killed. Obviously, they paid off."

Measures that had left him hideous and warped beyond all recognition. Ginny turned around to look at him curiously. "Is that what you're going to become?"

Tom's mouth twisted in distaste, but it was gone a moment later.

She shook her head, feeling ill. "That's horrible. Why would you do that to yourself?" She could not keep the disgust from her voice.

Swiftly, she found herself pressed back against the chipped marble sink, his slender hands braced either side of as he leaned forward, quietly enunciating each word. "I wouldn't expect you to understand. Your ignorant mind couldn't begin to comprehend the things I yearn for. If you knew what was denied me for years, the kind of life I had to endure -" He hissed under his breath and fell silent.

She should have taken that as a warning. But then, she wasn't afraid of things the way she used to be. "If you had known - then - would you still -"

He looked down at her with thinly veiled contempt. "You have no sense of subtlety, Ginevra. Does that never tire you?"

Not if it makes me different from you, she thought. Tom probably thought Harry didn't have any subtlety either. Maybe he didn't. But Harry was a hero and had other far more valuable qualities: bravery, loyalty, love. Harry was full of love. And maybe, one day (if she was very lucky) some of that love would extend to her.

Tom stared at her, a bleak expression on his angular, handsome face. She wondered what was going on in that brilliant, dangerous mind of his. "You know, I don't think you so very changed, after all. You still continue to grasp at things that don't exist."

She sneered. "You're deluded."

"Am I?" He regarded her with something close to scorn. "Because I don't think you would be here if you'd learned your lesson."

She thrust her chin forward. "It's you. You're the one who keeps following me."

He actually laughed at her. "Even now, Ginevra? You still continue to think that your worthless existence matters to me?"

"You haven't killed me yet." She was goading him and she knew it.

Tom looked at her thoughtfully as though making up his mind about something. "You're going to die one day," he said finally. "I've already decided that. And it will be at my hand. But the time and place of it will be at my choosing. You know that, don't you?"

She swallowed down a mouthful of cloying air. Breathe. Breathe.

She flinched as he lifted her hand, dropping a burning kiss onto her cold palm. His dark eyes were edged with faint amusement. "But until then… pleasant dreams, lover."

IV

1996

After Michael came Dean. Like Michael, Dean was dark-haired and dark-eyed. Like Michael, there was also something wanting in him.

But still, Dean was better than Michael. Michael had been Ravenclaw to the bone - quiet and solemn and bookish, yet oh-so-nice. Dean was boisterous and assertive, he liked Quidditch, and he liked her, which was enough.

But of course, it wasn't enough.

But she never told him that, just like she never told him that she had a fear of drowning ever since that year, or that the smell of ink made her heart pound and her head swim with sickness.

She liked being with Dean however, because when she was with Dean, she didn't forget to breathe. Although it was not Dean she found herself thinking of these days…

Harry liked her.

She caught him staring at her when he thought she wasn't looking. That flash of irritation and uncharacteristic jealousy passing across his face whenever he saw her with Dean. He sought her out, too, always lingering after Quidditch practice so they could walk back to the Gryffindor Tower together. And she let him.

There was something subtly altered about him this year - maybe ever since Sirius had died. His familiar face had become paler, harsher, the youthful curves all turned to sharp lines and asymmetrical angles. Ginny realised it suited him. He had grown several inches too, his height eclipsing hers in a way she liked. His emerald eyes had lost some of that hopeless transparency, the former clarity shrouded in secrets and suspicions that weren't there before. She had secrets of her own, so it seemed only fair that Harry was allowed to have his.

But still. It was another one of those tiny pieces that brought him closer to… That different sameness that sometimes made her shudder when she caught his pale, angular face in those rare moments without the glasses, or the way his black hair fell across his forehead at a certain angle. Seeing double. He often had his head buried in that Potions book too, which filled her with nameless dread, maybe it was because she had come to distrust black-haired boys and books.

Neither could live while the other survived, and sometimes Ginny thought she must be the reason for it. They both jostled in her soul, fighting for dominance. But she tried to push Tom out while she welcomed Harry with open arms.

Therein lay the difference between the two. She was in love with Harry. She was in hate with Tom. With such conflict inside her, there was simply no room for Dean. He did not make so much a graze on her bruised heart, while Harry and Tom were puncture wounds, driven so deep she could bleed to death from it. Ruby swords and Basilisk fangs. Blood and ink and venom.

Yet she welcomed every painful leap in her heart when Harry entered a room, every shudder when he accidentally brushed against her, she welcomed all these things because they came from Harry whom she loved and would endure anything for.

But deep down, a part of her resented it. The fact that Harry only wanted her when she was unavailable, unattainable.

(But we'll show him, won't we, beloved)

She tried to ignore that voice. She would never hurt Harry, never, never -

(Show him what he is missing when he sees us entwined in an eternal embrace, my touch making you scream in pleasure as I take you beneath the cover of darkness)

"Stop it!"

(until you cannot breathe or think anything but my name upon your bloody lips. Don't you want to see him pay?)

That voice always at the back of her mind. Every night a cruel promise of what he could offer her. Jewelled snakes clasped her tight, held her down in a green prison (palace). Quivering, gleaming, deadly. Her restless limbs twitched beneath the covers but the familiar clammy chill enveloped her mind, drawing her down, down, and the serpents shackled her. Back in the chamber, water drip, drip, dripping on the flagstone floor. Cold stone beneath her (but not as cold as his skin). Nothing would ever be warm again. Tom's pale face visible through the emerald mist. Eyes black like ink. Swirling. Shimmering scintillations as he lowered his head to hers.

(You've had a taste now, lover. And its bitterness was to your liking)

Drowning, dreaming, a delicious dance of death. Some poisons never left the body. And once or twice she even found herself waiting through the twilight, anticipating those dreams with a sickening fascination. The darkness loved her and sometimes she began to wonder if she could love it in return.

Those nocturnal hours inevitably left their marks. Her face ran high with colour. There was fevered brilliancy in her eyes, wild laughter in her voice. She burned with the heightened brightness of a consumptive. In lessons, at Quidditch practice, she laughed harder than ever, chatted carelessly about anything and everything. Dean irritated her more by the day, his bland remarks and constant attempts to help her almost enough to make her scream.

"You look tired, Ginevra," Tom said conversationally one day as she was returning from a Care of Magical Creatures class, walking alongside her as though it was the most natural thing in the world. "Not sleeping well?"

(You were supposed to sleep forever)

She shuddered, then stiffened her shoulders and glared at him.

"I hate you," she said.

"Yes, you do, don't you?" His eyes studied her face with dispassionate curiosity. The calm precision of a serpent about to strike. "But I think you need me more than you hate me."

I don't need you. Leave me alone.

Ginny looked away and continued walking. The late afternoon sun was slanting low in the sky, casting her long shadow across the grass. She could see Hagrid's hut in the distance and realised then why Tom had chosen to come to her here. It was another reminder, a memory-not-memory. His presence all within her, while deep inside, a prisoner in her own body, she had tried to shake him off, tried to fight - his pervasive voice a low, silken command -

Make sure you are not seen leaving the castle. Go to the rooster pen and break the neck of every bird you see. If anyone tries to stop you, turn your wand on them.

A dark, cloudless night. Bones snapping. The warm gush of blood drenching her robes. Blood that she had spent the next morning convincing herself was red paint, or ink, but you couldn't hide that bitter, metallic smell -

Rage blinded her for a moment, rendering her inarticulate.

"I could kill you," she ground out finally. Viciously.

Tom's eyes were cold and dark. "You might as well try killing your own shadow."

"I'll find a way. I don't know how - but one day I will. And I'll laugh as I do it."

"Why, I do believe you mean that." He looked oddly pleased. "You're different from how you used to be."

"I'm not a child anymore." Bitterness coiled within her. You saw to that.

"That's not what I meant."

Framed by the blood-hued setting sun, he held out his slender white hands before her, hands that had killed and would kill again.

"And to think," he murmured, "That I shaped you from these hands, formed you in my own image and likeness. Seeing myself in your hatred."

Ginny said nothing. She was frozen with horror.

Tom touched her hair, lightly. "You charm people so easily. Did you never wonder where that came from? It was certainly a talent you lacked at eleven."

His lips brushed hers cruelly, leaving a fleeting taste of old magic and ink and poison.

"I think I prefer you this way."

V

1997

The end of the world was drawing near and she had no one to talk to. Not in Hogwarts. She and Neville and Luna - they were the strong ones, the ones everyone looked to for morale. She did not dare write to her parents, not when their mail was being opened and read by hostile eyes. Percy was long gone (dead to me now) and Ron… she didn't know where Ron was.

There was no one. Not even -

Tom had been quiet. Quieter than he had been for months, ever since she and Harry had gotten together (and then apart). When Harry was near, he drowned out Tom. Maybe it was because Harry had a power all of his own when it came to possessing her heart and soul, and it had nothing to do with magic. She had loved him for nearly six years and for the first time, she was truly happy because of it. With Harry at her side, she thought she was free of Tom at last.

But then Harry left.

Harry left, and as darkness and despair crept into her soul, he returned. It should not have surprised her. Darkness and despair, those were the things that fed him, gave him power. Strengthened the poison he dripped into her ears, using the truth to lie with such cruel brilliance that she could do nothing other than believe him.

(They always abandon you, Ginevra. Have you never wondered why that is?)

"Harry loves me."

(That means nothing. He's still abandoned you. And with the clever Mudblood girl, too. Maybe it was her he wanted all along.)

Cool lips ghosting her brow.

(I'm all you have left.)

Tom was all she saw when she closed her eyes. All she breathed. That smooth, damning voice whispering at her to give in. Asking her what she was fighting for and why she bothered. He had shown her that there was no light amid the darkness, only deeper shades of black. And always, water. It pulled at her, tugged at her clothing, her hair, seeking to draw her under (into the cold, and the dark, with me forever and forever, because that's what you always wanted, isn't it?)

Deny it as she might, it was inarguable that Ginny found herself at the lake more and more often these days, staring at the moving ripples that swirled like dark-brushed strokes of watercolour. A grey, bleak December afternoon; she pulled the edges of her robes tighter around herself, hunching her small shoulders against the biting cold.

Are you here, Tom?

(I'm always here)

I can't do it any more. Everything's gone to hell and madness and we're losing. We're losing. She had never admitted this before, not even to herself.

She kicked a stone, watching as it skimmed the surface before disappearing soundlessly. Gazing into the black depths, she wondered what it would be like to lose herself in there, the oily ripples closing over her head, pooling around her, enveloping her in oblivion as she drifted down, down…

The silence roared in her ears. Darkness bled into her vision and it seemed she was falling forward… She stepped back with a shudder.

I'm drowning. Help me, Tom, I'm drowning.

A chill wind stirred the frost-choked grasses and, on instinct, she turned around.

He was watching her calmly. His high shoulders were arched slightly as he leaned back, his head tilted to one side.

"I was wondering if you were ever going to seek me out," he said. "I thought you might, eventually - and I was right."

"Bully for you," she snarled, but there wasn't much energy in it. She realised she had been looking for him all along.

With a light, easy grace, he made his way down the bank to stand beside her. She looked down and saw their reflections. Blurring together. Inseparable.

"I wanted you dead," he said thoughtfully. "I would have killed you with a song in my heart… but I think in the end, this way is much sweeter. Don't you agree? All I need do is sit back and watch your world be destroyed along with everything you hold dear."

"Well you must be loving this then," she forced through clenched teeth.

"Dying in the chamber was the only peace you've ever known." His reflection blurred, smiled. "Tell me, was it worth it? Clinging on all these years? You were only forestalling the inevitable."

Inevitable. She screamed, she struggled, she fought. Yet always, she came back to him.

"I'm tired of fighting," she said dully. "I just want it finished."

"I could have told you that long ago."

"If I'm going to lose anyway," she said. "I'd rather it be to you."

He smiled at that, the old arrogance flashing through his eyes. "I thought as much."

One finger moved along her cheek. Slow. Deliberate. Toying idly with a coil of red hair.

"Come with me," he murmured. "And I can make it stop."

He had said that to her once before. When she had faded to bone and the ghosts of old words, when she was more Tom than herself.

I can make it stop, Ginevra. You want it to stop, don't you?

Yes, Tom.

Just close your eyes, let your body relax until it seems you are floating above it… so tired… you can barely hold your quill… feel how it slips from your fingers… your eyelids are falling… yes, that's it… relax… let me in…

"Alright, Tom," she said.

She wished she hadn't seen his face then - alight with that wild happiness she hadn't seen since he had risen from the diary. It was somehow both beautiful and horrible, and the thought of seeing it forever...

A pale hand touched her shoulder gently and she stiffened with surprise - but then, why would he resort to force when she had agreed to come willingly?

"I'm scared," she said with a shaky laugh. Too shrill and high, unlike her own.

This didn't seem to surprise him. "Fear suits you, Ginevra. It makes you so much more -" he arched her body towards him and this time she did not resist - "pliable."

He gave her a brief, searing kiss on the mouth, and for a moment Ginny thought she had drowned already. There was darkness behind her eyes and that familiar drowsing bitterness coursing through the blood. Long arms winding round her waist, pulling her against him and she felt the rapid, fevered beat of his heart against hers. If it were anyone but Tom -

He pulled away and it took several moments for the world to right itself. She saw that his pale cheeks were uncommonly flushed, curious excitement in his dark eyes. He had known all along that she would submit. His arrogance, always his arrogance, the one weakness that would ultimately be his undoing…

"Give me your wand," he said.

Obediently, she held it out towards him. His long fingers reached out -

That was when she struck.

"Petrificus Totalus!"

Stunned surprise flared in his eyes, then he was falling, falling down into the water. It took all her weight to support him, her thin arms trembling violently with the effort. Still the weight of him brought her to her knees, the lower half of her robes drenched as she forced his head beneath the surface of the water, grimly holding it under. Long limbs thrashing wildly in spite of the body-bind, the convulsive motions almost dragging her under with him. She was gasping great, heaving breaths -

- don't let go - no matter what, don't let go -

His body jerked spasmodically, as though in rigor mortis. Sickly amber light illuminated the dark water that suddenly turned white-hot, bubbling against her hands - magic without a wand - how -? but she gritted her teeth and rode out the pain, still she did not let go -

She was laughing, or crying - love and madness and passion and hate hate hate -

You taught me everything I know. You taught me to be ruthless -

The movements slowed, slackened -

Then he was gone.

Her hands grasped nothing but water. She stared down, but there was nothing but darkly rippling waves lapping gently against the frozen bank (like ink). A faint breath of magic carried on the still air.

Ginny stood still, breathing hard.

Could it really be that easy?

No whispers. No condemnation.

For the first time in over five years, there was silence. There was certainty. She had defeated Tom. She could defeat anything.

The surface of the lake glimmered, as though with some secret knowing.

She knelt down to pick up her wand -

And felt a rush of power surge through her veins, brilliant and deadly, the intoxicating thrill lifting her spirit, making her light as air, luminous. No longer drowning in cloying mists, but everything around her sharp and heightened. Clarity. She knew power, she knew hunger, she knew limitless ambition. It twisted, emanating through her skin, she glowed, translucent. Every gasp of air seared her chest yet there was a strange exhilaration in the pain. Binding. Burning. And she was immortal. She held out her white hands (formed in my own image and likeness) and for an instant, she could have shaped the world as she wished -

The moment passed.

Rapidly as a cloud passing over the sun, she was a sixteen year old girl again, small for her age, with wet robes clinging to her legs as she struggled up the slick bank. The ground was damp, turning to treacherous black ice. She was shivering with cold.

She turned away from the lake in a movement of red hair and dark eyes, and slowly made her way back to the castle.

But the memory of that secret power deep within, that moment of immortality remained, and she did not forget.

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