Since I'm in a Tom/Ginny mood tonight, I think that I'll post up one of the one shot ficlets I wrote.

Tom/Ginny, obviously...


Poison

He had never met anyone so willing to give him something.

…something that he hadn’t demanded.

…something that he had never even asked for.

Asking for things made people weak. What she offered made them weaker.

He wasn’t weak. He didn’t ask for things. But she offered it anyway.

He tried to shove it aside each time. Every time, she would offer it again, as though he hadn’t rejected it a thousand times over already.

Even when she knew he shouldn’t be trusted, she offered it to him. Even when she learned his secrets, what he was capable of, she extended her gift. It was something he had never had, something he had never seen. It was as fragile as glass, and he wasn’t sure he liked that.

At first, it was easy. Easy to lie; easy to manipulate her. He knew who he was – or who he had been rather. And through her, he learned what he went on to become. And he had been proud of it. He offered her false friendship and a ‘sympathetic’ ear.

And she had accepted.

She was disgustingly naïve about the ways of the world – a luxury he had never had. She was poor, but that was the worst of her troubles – it had been the best of his. She poured her soul out into the pages that separated their worlds. In return, he poured his into her and made her do terrible things.

…she didn’t ever remember doing them.

…but she remembered not remembering.

And when she found these blank spaces of memory, it was him that she turned to.

…first and unfalteringly.

…seeking the help of a friend that wasn’t real.

She poured her heart out to him on those yellowed sheets, told him a number of times that she liked Harry Potter – but it was he that she loved best. She told him that she wished that he was more than just a memory in a book, how she wished that she were older.

He had reminded her with a hint of amusement that he would always be sixteen, because he was a memory, and memories don’t age. What was she to do then?

She had told him that she would just have to learn how to stay sixteen forever too. After all, he had managed to do it; so it could be done.

So simple and naïve. She thought that there was an answer to everything. She thought that everyone had good in them – even him. Even after the power of the diary had begun to scare her, even after she had tossed it away in fear, she had continued to believe it. What no one knew was that she had gone back to the girls’ bathroom to retrieve the diary only a few hours after abandoning it.

She told him that later, after getting the book back from Harry. He had had mixed feelings when she had been the next to write to him. He had been angry that he hadn’t been able to speak more with Potter, had been irritated that he had lost the opportunity to work his way into Potter’s thoughts and manipulate him the way he had manipulated her. He had had a change of plans; it would have been ironic justice for the Boy-Who-Lived to feed his soul the way that she had, for Harry Potter to die so that he could live again. And then she had been the next to write; admitting that she had gone back for the diary soon after and had been upset to find it missing. He was endlessly amused by the fact that not only had she written to him again, but she continued to pour her heart and soul out – starting with an extensive apology for doing what she thought was right.

No. He had never seen her like. He had never known anyone to be so naïve, so trusting, so stupid. All he had to do was to write a few comforting words, tell her that he knew no more than she knew, and she was pacified until the blank spaces in her memory appeared again, until she found herself covered in feathers or blood, or heard of another attack. And then he would write a few more comforting words, tell her that he knew no more than she knew…it was a deliciously vicious circle.

He slowly pointed her mind, her innocence – but it was always him she turned to. Always him she trusted.

And ever so slowly, she poisoned him. Her gift was a terrible one – it made people weak. And if he didn’t put an end to it – she would make him weak. And he couldn’t allow that.

He would kill three birds with a single stone – he would be rid of that troublesome Potter, he would free himself from his prison, and he could be rid of that silly little girl who had the potential to poison him lethally.

All he had to do was make one last trip, leave one last message, and he could be whole again.

She hadn’t wanted to do it, but she had. He had made her. Forced her to write her own farewell on the wall and go down into the chamber to wait. He had betrayed her in a very cruel, very real, very undeniable way; yet she cried for him, she pitied him; she continued to insist that there was good in him.

He was puzzled by this. After all, she was the one who would be dead in a few hours. And he would be more than the memory of his sixteen-year-old self. He would be as real as she was now.

It was in that chamber that he had appeared to her for the first and only time in the physical world. She was dying; he was being reborn. Where one loved too much, the other loved too little. She proved to be his light, and he her darkness. There is a fragile balance to everything in the world, and they maintained it in every aspect. Perfect opposites in a fatal attraction, bound by separate desires and needs; their only similarity being that they both had desires and needs.

She had been crying all the way down to the chamber. With his appearance, the tears stopped. She had looked up at him with her large doe-like eyes; eyes that asked a million more questions than she could ever have time to write.

If he hadn’t been just an apparition when he first came to her, he probably would have killed her right then. He had never hated anyone more than he had hated her in that single moment. It was a hate driving by things that he could never understand, by feelings that she stirred within him.

…he was older, but in some ways, she was wiser.

She hadn’t spoken much before she had fainted of weakness. She told him that he had looked just as she had dreamed him. And he had given her that confident half-smile that was always in her dreams, and told her that it was because it had been him all along. Had she not been so pale and sickly at that point, she probably would have blushed at the memory of the kisses that they had shared in her dreams upon this revelation.

She had fallen into a deep sleep, very like death, soon after that. He found himself strangely moved by how small, fragile and out of place she looked in this cold, stony place that he was so well suited for. He was reminded of that stupid Muggle story that he had had heard at the orphanage. The story of the virtuous, innocent sleeping beauty, poisoned by a spindle prick. But this time, there would be no princes. The poison would consume her – because she had let it.

…because her prince was her poison.

He had recited bits of her diary entries to Potter when he had arrived to find her cold and near death. The worst exchanges she had shared with him. The ones that she had written in panic or in fear. He said nothing of the rest – her eventual resignation, her refusal to betray him even when she had finally accepted the truth.

He didn’t speak of that, because he didn’t understand it. How could someone offer such a fragile gift time and time again, a gift broken a thousand times, shattered like glass, and pieced back together by careful, deliberate hands each time?

He didn’t understand how she could offer him love, in spite of what he was, in spite of who he was. It was this train of thought that had caused him to react too late. It was his distraction that had made him forget about the healing power of phoenix tears. Potter plunged the basilisk’s fang into the diary, but it didn’t matter.

After all, he was already poisoned.

Ginevra Weasley had been his poison.

And Tom Riddle was hers.


Also, if you love Tom/Ginny, find the fanfiction 'Of Kismet' on Fanfiction.net. While I don't usually deal with reading fic over there (because most of it SUCKS), and I no longer post there (because the format that they've adopted SUCKS), I will say that this fic was really a gem.

And for the record, I did not write 'Of Kismet'. I only wish I did.

ETA: I forgot to sign again!

Becca, Slytherin