Pomegranate Seeds
Author: BeccaFran
Title: Pomegranate Seeds
Challenge: Persephone
Summary: The Chamber of Secrets is a part of Ginny now, but even she does not know how big a part that is.
Rating: Teen
Genre: Angst/Mild Darkfic/Adventure
Word Count: ~4,000
Notes/Warnings: Contains Tom/Ginny and mildly dark themes. Many thanks to margotheangel and incognito for beta-reading, and to magnolia_mama for her advice. And many, many thanks to ladyg_funk for running this whole thing!
Persephone, the dearly beloved daughter of Zeus and Demeter, was picking flowers in a field one day when Hades appeared and stole her away to the underworld. Ginny knows how she must've felt.
"Hello, Ginny," he said in his smooth voice. "I've been waiting for you." He rose and ushered her in to the dark chamber as though it were a fine palace and he its lord and master. She was shivering, and her hands were dripping with rooster blood.
"I'm so pleased that you're here." His body was still transparent, and she could see the stone walls of the cavern behind him. "Please, have a seat. Would you care for some tea?"
"Tom..." she said, forcing the word from her parched throat. In response, he only smiled, and the edges of his smile were sharp. "Please, Tom," she tried again, her voice no more than a whisper. "I can't stay here, I have to go, you can't--"
"Oh, I'm afraid you cannot leave, my dear," he said.
Ginny felt her knees weaken. She was growing tired, so tired that she could hardly stand. It would be so nice to just lie down for a little while on the floor, but she knew this was important.
"You don't understand," she said. "I-- this--"
"No, Ginevra," he said, pronouncing her full name sarcastically. "You are the one who does not understand."
Swaying on her feet, she reached instinctively for some support, but found nothing. The floor seemed to shift, then suddenly rise up toward her. She struggled to sit up and face him. When she could finally see him again, he had grown even more solid.
"Tom," she said again. "Please let me go. Please, you don't have to--"
He ignored her, holding his own hands in front of his face and admiring them. "I grow stronger already," he said. "As you become weaker, I am becoming stronger."
If Ginny closed her eyes, she could see a vision of Tom gaining power, bathed in green light as he cast spell after spell, leading his Death Eaters into battle, striding into the Ministry itself. The images swam in her vision, and when she opened her eyes she could still see them, superimposed over the rock walls of her prison, her tomb. She could not tell if it was her own vision or his.
"Rest awhile, Ginevra," he said, his voice silky and gentle. It sounded soothing, relaxing. She could close her eyes for just a minute, and after all it was so hard to keep them open.
"Rest," he said.
###
The castle feels emptier than it ever has before. Slytherin House is reduced to a shadow of its former self, and the other houses are missing students, too. Every week brings news that sends another classmate home in tears. Professor McGonagall's stately salt-and-pepper hair is turning white from the tips to the roots, judging by the spiral pattern in her tight bun. At Halloween the students are told they will no longer be allowed outside the castle walls.
From the window of her dormitory, Ginny can see the forest, and nothing moves there. She allows herself a tear: one for her dad's Anglia, one for Firenze, one for Hagrid's spider, one for the Merpeople below the lake. After that, she loses count.
The constant wondering is like an itch in her mind. She finds it difficult to focus on her classes, and revising seems to take forever. The castle's windows draw her in like a summoning spell. Her mind goes around in a constant spiral -- her parents, brothers, Harry, Voldemort, the Order, her parents... She lies down to sleep thinking of Harry and his inevitable conflict with Voldemort, and she wakes up thinking of it, too, often waking with tears on her pillow.
Ginny is in her dormitory room, lying on her bed with a book open in front of her which she is not really reading, when Hedwig appears at the window. At first, Ginny thinks the owl must be a mistake, or even an illusion. She has been wanting to see Harry's owl, and so she thinks she does. It is imaginary, or it is someone else's beautiful snow-white owl. Only it isn't: it's Hedwig, and she has a note from Harry, asking her to come outside.
She throws on shoes and a cloak, and runs as fast as she can down staircase after staircase, to meet Harry downstairs as the note asks. The castle gives them its blessing, and the stairs all stay in the right places. She arrives at the spot behind the Quidditch Pitch stands in short order, breathless and windswept.
Harry is there, looking worn and tired. There are dark circles under his eyes and his robes are dirty and fraying. His hair is messy as usual, though, and his eyes are green and bright behind his glasses. It has been eight months and twenty-three days since she's seen him and he is finally here. She wants to run to him, to wrap her arms around him and kiss him until every inch of his skin has been covered by her lips.
Instead, she smiles at him and he smiles back. "Hi," she says.
"Hullo," he answers. Ginny thinks about the articles she's seen in the Prophet about how to identify a polyjuiced imposter, but Harry doesn't give her a chance to bring it up. "I need your help," he says quickly. She knows it's him. Anyone pretending would have made more of an effort at romance.
"It's nice to see you too, Harry," Ginny says, amused.
"Erm." Harry has the grace to look at least a little embarrassed. "I missed you," he says. "But I do need your help."
Ginny crosses her arms and waits.
"So, erm, remember the diary?" She raises an eyebrow, and he rushes on. "Of course. Right. All right, so the diary had a piece of Voldemort's soul in it, called a Horcrux. And there are six of them. Or, erm. There were. Before. But we, you know, broke them. Except the diary, and Dumbledore got another one. There's just one left, and we think-- that is, Hermione thinks-- I don't think, I just, you know, cast the spells and sometimes cook dinner, but--"
"Horcruxes?" Ginny supplies, sensing that he is wandering off topic.
"Yes, right. There's one here. The last one. And, erm, we need to find it and break it so we can--"
"Kill Voldemort," she says, and thinks of the cold, handsome face of her first friend in the world.
"Right." Harry sounds relieved.
###
The legends say that while in the underworld, Persephone ate four pomegranate seeds and was thus forced to return every year to the place of her captivity.
Ginny dreams about blood and ink, the colors swirling together in her mind over images of snakes and swords and handsome, bright-eyed boys. When she dreams, she remembers the safe, familiar feeling of having a friend she could carry around in her pocket, the most perfect and understanding companion imaginable. She remembers the feeling of surrender, the utter relief of letting her mind go blank and letting him in, letting him take over.
Ginny wakes from those dreams feeling happy and refreshed, and only once she is awake does she begin to worry.
Hermione nearly died that year, and Penelope, and Colin, but when Ginny closes her eyes and sees black ink and red blood flowing together like a river, all she can feel is relief, and the joy of being reunited with her long-lost friend.
###
Hogwarts has always been in her life, in one way or another. She knows its nooks and crannies, its solitary spots and hidden places better than any of the other students, and indeed many of the faculty.
On the fifth floor there is a deserted corridor that was once used to teach mediwizardry, when they'd taught that at Hogwarts. It's empty now -- no classes held here, no professors to fill the empty offices, and no dissections in the vacant labs. She'd shown Michael, and he'd been fascinated by the dusty books, abandoned on the shelves. In that old office, they'd shared their first open-mouthed kiss, awkward and sloppy but undeniably, deliciously wonderful all the same. Places do not belong to one person alone, especially at Hogwarts, which has stood for a thousand years. But she was more hurt than she could say when Michael brought Cho there.
Far underneath the lowest basement storage room lies the ancient catacombs constructed by Salazar Slytherin himself -- the Chamber of Secrets. And Ginny can keep a secret. She's told no one that once a year she goes into the girls' bathroom on the second floor, and speaks the password softly, letting the sounds slip through her lips in the language of snakes. The wall opens and a tunnel appears, and Ginny tumbles down into the Chamber. The tunnels are filled with the debris of centuries, both physical and magical. There is an enormous skeleton on the stone floor, and near its head she can see a spreading stain, brown against the gray stone of the floor. A thick aura of dark magic clouds the chamber like a fog, and little streams of water run down the walls in slow trickles. Ginny can feel her skin tingle, and the tiny red hairs on her arms stand on end when she comes here, but she does it all the same. It is true that the room would continue to exist without her visits, but this way she has proof.
And even though she can barely admit it to herself, there is a part of her that needs to go there, that needs the Chamber and the magics it contains. It just feels right to her, somehow. There is something inside herself that feels an affinity with that place and the magic there and the bloodstains on the floor and the giant snake skeleton.
###
Hades stole Persephone away to his kingdom to be his Queen. She became the terrible and merciless ruler of the dead, with an army of spirits and shades at her command.
Tom was a spirit himself, thin and incorporeal except for his power over Ginny. She was the ruler of absolutely nothing inside the Chamber, while she lay there on the cold stone floor and her life slipped away through her fingers.
But there are times when she feels that Tom is her husband, her ruler, her once and future king. He is bound to her life and her soul in a way that no other man will ever be. His cold fingers never touched her then, but her body cries out for him now and she wakes from her dreams feeling aroused and empty.
He did not touch her, never entered and abused her. He could not have, with his ghostly hands. Still, sometimes she wishes he did, when the moon is dark and the snow lies heavy outside and she is awake and wanting.
Other times, Ginny dreams of commanding armies and ruling over huddled masses with terrible power. She would sit on a jeweled throne and multitudes would bow to her command. The dreams are so vivid it is as though she has actually lived them, in this or some other life. Waking in the dormitory, the school and the constant but faraway danger of the war seem muted and pale in contrast. In those early hours when the sky is gray outside and her room is halfway between light and dark, Ginny hardly knows which life is real.
###
At her brother's wedding, after the speeches and the dancing, after everyone came and celebrated and left, Ginny sat with Harry in the garden. She couldn't think of anything she wanted to say, not really. He had to go, and she had to let him. It all seemed very clear-cut. The moon had already set and she had only the starlight to see him by, but his eyes still looked brilliantly green in the low light.
She didn't say anything. All she did was hold his hand.
Now, a part of her wishes she'd knocked him over the head with her broomstick and forced him to let her come along. But that part of her doesn't usually get to make decisions. She probably wouldn't have done it anyway.
She wonders if she would feel better, if he had gotten the chance to push her away again.
###
Her memory of that time in the Chamber is a wash of feelings and emotions and confusion, flowing together until they are not really distinct at all but all mixed up in a crazy blend of horror and pain. What she remembers most is bleeding. Her own life drained out of her as she lay there on the cold stone floor, until she was so weak that it seemed like a good idea to just close her eyes, because that would be so much easier. The ink gushed out of the diary when Harry stabbed it, flowing out in torrents across the stone floor as if the book had been alive. In a way, it was alive, and a part of Ginny wanted to cry when that proud, vibrant life was ended so savagely. And then there was the blood of the basilisk.
When Harry killed the basilisk, Ginny was lying unconscious on the floor of the cavern, and couldn't see it happen. But when she awoke, the scene was clear: a gigantic serpentine carcass with blood pouring from its mouth. Harry, jeweled sword at his side, drenched in the same red blood. Mixing with the blood, gushing floes of ink from the diary and tears from Fawkes, along with the moisture dripping from the walls. Thick, viscous life-giving liquid flowed away and soaked into the stone everywhere she looked. Ginny put her head in her hands and cried, although she could not have said who or what she was crying for: herself, stolen away from her family and betrayed by her only friend; Harry, nothing but a scared little boy with an enormous sword and drenched in dark, sticky blood; or Tom, the handsome boy that she'd come to depend on and admire and even love, so much that she'd given up everything for him.
What she remembers most clearly from the whole experience is Tom himself. His memory is in fact so vivid that he hardly feels like a memory at all, but rather like a close friend whom she might've seen last week or the day before. Some days he is more real to her than Harry.
Ginny's memory of Harry in the Chamber is blurred and obscured by myth and heroism. She can think objectively about what happened, but it hardly seems possible. A twelve-year-old child carrying the mighty sword of a Hogwarts founder, almost as long as he is tall, and killing a basilisk? It's completely absurd. There are days when she wonders if it's even possible that Harry did all that -- it seems just as likely that it was Godric Gryffindor himself, returned ten centuries later from the grave to rescue her.
###
"So to sum up," Ginny says, brusque but uncertain. "There's some kind of thing, somewhere in the castle, that has Voldemort's soul in it, and we need to find it and break it."
"Yes." Harry sounds as though this is something he does every day, which actually is probably true.
"Some thing, somewhere," Ginny repeats. Harry nods in agreement, not seeing the problem. "Well," she says, pulling out her wand. "The obvious solution is to just blow up the entire castle and then we won't have to do all that messy searching."
Harry laughs, and Ginny is pleased. Harry laughing is a wonderful sound, and one that she's missed while he's been gone.
"We don't really know what it is," he says, "but we do have some ideas." She lowers her wand, as though she's reconsidering her plan to destroy the castle. "There was one -- a cup -- that belonged to Hufflepuff," he says. "To Helga Hufflepuff, I mean, not Zacharias Smith or anything."
He smiles uncertainly, and she sees something in his eyes that warms her from the inside out. This is really Harry, and he's really here and alive and all of those things that she never thought could be true. Impulsively, she takes his hand, just wanting to touch and be touched in return. Harry looks surprised, but he doesn't pull away.
"So, Hufflepuff, and then there was this staff that was Ravenclaw's, a walking stick or something, and Slytherin's locket, so…"
"So you think the last one might be Gryffindor's," Ginny finished.
"Yeah."
Ginny thinks of Godric Gryffindor, of the way he looks in the portrait in the stairwell near the sixth floor, of his bushy red hair and shining armor and gleaming sword. She pictures that sword piercing the skull of a deadly snake, and the way that the rubies seemed to gleam even brighter with blood pouring across them. A chill runs through her body.
"The sword," she says. "It has to be the sword."
"No," he says right away, quickly enough that it's obvious he isn't thinking about it at all. "It can't be -- I used it, I --"
"I used the diary, too," Ginny says.
She can't help but picture Harry wielding the sword as a young child, making clumsy passes at the enormous serpent. In her mind, that vision is compared to another one: a handsome and confident Tom Riddle holding the sword in one hand as though he were born to it, leading his Death Eaters while the sword gleams in the air. Paradoxically, she sees Harry and Tom in a swordfight, each of them using Gryffindor's sword: one version of the sword is clean and shining beautifully, the other is covered in basilisk blood. Tom is quick and skillful, and Harry is just a little child; there is no real contest there.
She shakes her head to dispel the vision. "We have to try the sword," she says, although she knows it must be the Horcrux. "We don't know anything else of Gryffindor's."
Harry nods, accepting this logic, and Ginny breathes a sigh of relief.
###
Headmistress McGonagall is in London, arguing with the Minister, but Harry does not want to wait. This is fine with Ginny; she does not like to wait, either. Ginny straightens her tie and tries to act nonchalant as she walks down the hall, as though she walks this corridor all the time. Behind her, Harry trails along under the invisibility cloak. Near the Headmistress's office, Ginny stops to tie her shoe, and Harry whispers the password under his breath. They jump through the door and hope that no one saw them.
They are standing on a narrow step on a staircase that is rotating around in the darkness, and Harry is pressed right up against her. Although she cannot see him, she can feel his heat through her clothes and she leans her head against his invisible shoulder for a brief second, breathing in his scent and imagining that his resolve will somehow transfer to her. It almost feels real for a moment before they arrive at the office and Harry steps out and she has to follow.
The round office is the same room that it was when Dumbledore was Headmaster, but the contents are scrupulously neat now. Everything looks freshly scrubbed. The portraits on the wall murmur amongst themselves at the intrusion, but none of them speak up and Harry and Ginny do not try to talk to them. The sword is resting in a glass display case on the wall, rubies shining in the hilt the color of blood. For a moment it looks as though the hilt is covered in blood, but then Ginny blinks and the sight is gone.
Harry walks toward the case and opens the latches carefully. He opens the case but does not take out the sword, motioning to Ginny to take it in her hand. She steps toward it and grasps the hilt in one hand, lifting the ancient weapon out of its case. For a moment, nothing happens except that the jewels seem to shine more brightly.
One moment, Ginny is watching the brilliant red gleam of the rubies set in the hilt of the sword. The next moment, her vision is filled with red. She sees the Chamber again, as it was years ago. Tom holds his hands in front of his face, examining them as he grows from a spirit into a concrete form. The giant serpent coils around him. He turns to the small figure of a young girl lying prone on the ground, picking her up and cradling her in his arms. Ginny knows that the girl is her younger self, and she watches longingly. Time seems to speed up, and before her eyes the Chamber is transformed from a filthy cave to a cavern of wonder, the walls adorned with carvings. To either side of the grand statue of Slytherin, there are likenesses of her own face. And before them, a vision of a Queen: the woman in the throne is beautiful, majestic, and terrible in her power. Legions of robed wizards bow down before her. Ginny knows she's looking into the future, and when the Queen raises her head, she sees her own face. In the throne beside her is Tom, his handsome face unchanged and the familiar sharp-edged smile on his face.
"Ginny..." She hears her own voice, as if from very far away. Looking up, she meets Tom's eyes, and his lips move in time with the words she hears. Ginny's heart leaps. Tom is speaking to her again, after all this time. "Ginny," he says. "All this can be yours. It can still be. Only claim the sword as your own, and take your place at my side, Ginevra."
Blinking, she looks down at the sword. The metal has warmed to the touch of her skin, and it feels natural in her hand. Her vision is fading, but she can still see her other self holding court in the Chamber of Secrets, with Tom at her side.
"Ginny?" It is the same voice speaking, but this time when she looks up, it is Harry's lips that are moving. What has just happened? What did she see?
"Ginny?" Harry asks again. "Are you all right?"
She opens her mouth to say something, but can't think of anything appropriate. Wordlessly, she holds out her left hand toward him, and he takes it in his. His hand is warm and strong and grips hers tightly, and she holds on as best she can.
Harry's hair is sticking up in seventeen different directions, and his glasses are crooked on his face. His robes are tattered and torn, but in his face Ginny can see real concern. She thinks of the grand vision of the future she has just seen, and the very different man who was at her side there. Tom is combed and polished, his robes neat and straight. He has a commanding presence; the Chamber was filled with his followers eager to do his bidding. She thinks of the sharp corners of his smile and the way he says her name, "Ginevra," pronouncing it as though it were an insult. Next to her, Harry's eyes are full of determination and an emotion that she can't name.
Slowly, she loosens her grip and the sword falls with a clatter to the stone floor.
"Break it," Ginny says. She has made her choice.
Title: Pomegranate Seeds
Challenge: Persephone
Summary: The Chamber of Secrets is a part of Ginny now, but even she does not know how big a part that is.
Rating: Teen
Genre: Angst/Mild Darkfic/Adventure
Word Count: ~4,000
Notes/Warnings: Contains Tom/Ginny and mildly dark themes. Many thanks to margotheangel and incognito for beta-reading, and to magnolia_mama for her advice. And many, many thanks to ladyg_funk for running this whole thing!
Persephone, the dearly beloved daughter of Zeus and Demeter, was picking flowers in a field one day when Hades appeared and stole her away to the underworld. Ginny knows how she must've felt.
"Hello, Ginny," he said in his smooth voice. "I've been waiting for you." He rose and ushered her in to the dark chamber as though it were a fine palace and he its lord and master. She was shivering, and her hands were dripping with rooster blood.
"I'm so pleased that you're here." His body was still transparent, and she could see the stone walls of the cavern behind him. "Please, have a seat. Would you care for some tea?"
"Tom..." she said, forcing the word from her parched throat. In response, he only smiled, and the edges of his smile were sharp. "Please, Tom," she tried again, her voice no more than a whisper. "I can't stay here, I have to go, you can't--"
"Oh, I'm afraid you cannot leave, my dear," he said.
Ginny felt her knees weaken. She was growing tired, so tired that she could hardly stand. It would be so nice to just lie down for a little while on the floor, but she knew this was important.
"You don't understand," she said. "I-- this--"
"No, Ginevra," he said, pronouncing her full name sarcastically. "You are the one who does not understand."
Swaying on her feet, she reached instinctively for some support, but found nothing. The floor seemed to shift, then suddenly rise up toward her. She struggled to sit up and face him. When she could finally see him again, he had grown even more solid.
"Tom," she said again. "Please let me go. Please, you don't have to--"
He ignored her, holding his own hands in front of his face and admiring them. "I grow stronger already," he said. "As you become weaker, I am becoming stronger."
If Ginny closed her eyes, she could see a vision of Tom gaining power, bathed in green light as he cast spell after spell, leading his Death Eaters into battle, striding into the Ministry itself. The images swam in her vision, and when she opened her eyes she could still see them, superimposed over the rock walls of her prison, her tomb. She could not tell if it was her own vision or his.
"Rest awhile, Ginevra," he said, his voice silky and gentle. It sounded soothing, relaxing. She could close her eyes for just a minute, and after all it was so hard to keep them open.
"Rest," he said.
###
The castle feels emptier than it ever has before. Slytherin House is reduced to a shadow of its former self, and the other houses are missing students, too. Every week brings news that sends another classmate home in tears. Professor McGonagall's stately salt-and-pepper hair is turning white from the tips to the roots, judging by the spiral pattern in her tight bun. At Halloween the students are told they will no longer be allowed outside the castle walls.
From the window of her dormitory, Ginny can see the forest, and nothing moves there. She allows herself a tear: one for her dad's Anglia, one for Firenze, one for Hagrid's spider, one for the Merpeople below the lake. After that, she loses count.
The constant wondering is like an itch in her mind. She finds it difficult to focus on her classes, and revising seems to take forever. The castle's windows draw her in like a summoning spell. Her mind goes around in a constant spiral -- her parents, brothers, Harry, Voldemort, the Order, her parents... She lies down to sleep thinking of Harry and his inevitable conflict with Voldemort, and she wakes up thinking of it, too, often waking with tears on her pillow.
Ginny is in her dormitory room, lying on her bed with a book open in front of her which she is not really reading, when Hedwig appears at the window. At first, Ginny thinks the owl must be a mistake, or even an illusion. She has been wanting to see Harry's owl, and so she thinks she does. It is imaginary, or it is someone else's beautiful snow-white owl. Only it isn't: it's Hedwig, and she has a note from Harry, asking her to come outside.
She throws on shoes and a cloak, and runs as fast as she can down staircase after staircase, to meet Harry downstairs as the note asks. The castle gives them its blessing, and the stairs all stay in the right places. She arrives at the spot behind the Quidditch Pitch stands in short order, breathless and windswept.
Harry is there, looking worn and tired. There are dark circles under his eyes and his robes are dirty and fraying. His hair is messy as usual, though, and his eyes are green and bright behind his glasses. It has been eight months and twenty-three days since she's seen him and he is finally here. She wants to run to him, to wrap her arms around him and kiss him until every inch of his skin has been covered by her lips.
Instead, she smiles at him and he smiles back. "Hi," she says.
"Hullo," he answers. Ginny thinks about the articles she's seen in the Prophet about how to identify a polyjuiced imposter, but Harry doesn't give her a chance to bring it up. "I need your help," he says quickly. She knows it's him. Anyone pretending would have made more of an effort at romance.
"It's nice to see you too, Harry," Ginny says, amused.
"Erm." Harry has the grace to look at least a little embarrassed. "I missed you," he says. "But I do need your help."
Ginny crosses her arms and waits.
"So, erm, remember the diary?" She raises an eyebrow, and he rushes on. "Of course. Right. All right, so the diary had a piece of Voldemort's soul in it, called a Horcrux. And there are six of them. Or, erm. There were. Before. But we, you know, broke them. Except the diary, and Dumbledore got another one. There's just one left, and we think-- that is, Hermione thinks-- I don't think, I just, you know, cast the spells and sometimes cook dinner, but--"
"Horcruxes?" Ginny supplies, sensing that he is wandering off topic.
"Yes, right. There's one here. The last one. And, erm, we need to find it and break it so we can--"
"Kill Voldemort," she says, and thinks of the cold, handsome face of her first friend in the world.
"Right." Harry sounds relieved.
###
The legends say that while in the underworld, Persephone ate four pomegranate seeds and was thus forced to return every year to the place of her captivity.
Ginny dreams about blood and ink, the colors swirling together in her mind over images of snakes and swords and handsome, bright-eyed boys. When she dreams, she remembers the safe, familiar feeling of having a friend she could carry around in her pocket, the most perfect and understanding companion imaginable. She remembers the feeling of surrender, the utter relief of letting her mind go blank and letting him in, letting him take over.
Ginny wakes from those dreams feeling happy and refreshed, and only once she is awake does she begin to worry.
Hermione nearly died that year, and Penelope, and Colin, but when Ginny closes her eyes and sees black ink and red blood flowing together like a river, all she can feel is relief, and the joy of being reunited with her long-lost friend.
###
Hogwarts has always been in her life, in one way or another. She knows its nooks and crannies, its solitary spots and hidden places better than any of the other students, and indeed many of the faculty.
On the fifth floor there is a deserted corridor that was once used to teach mediwizardry, when they'd taught that at Hogwarts. It's empty now -- no classes held here, no professors to fill the empty offices, and no dissections in the vacant labs. She'd shown Michael, and he'd been fascinated by the dusty books, abandoned on the shelves. In that old office, they'd shared their first open-mouthed kiss, awkward and sloppy but undeniably, deliciously wonderful all the same. Places do not belong to one person alone, especially at Hogwarts, which has stood for a thousand years. But she was more hurt than she could say when Michael brought Cho there.
Far underneath the lowest basement storage room lies the ancient catacombs constructed by Salazar Slytherin himself -- the Chamber of Secrets. And Ginny can keep a secret. She's told no one that once a year she goes into the girls' bathroom on the second floor, and speaks the password softly, letting the sounds slip through her lips in the language of snakes. The wall opens and a tunnel appears, and Ginny tumbles down into the Chamber. The tunnels are filled with the debris of centuries, both physical and magical. There is an enormous skeleton on the stone floor, and near its head she can see a spreading stain, brown against the gray stone of the floor. A thick aura of dark magic clouds the chamber like a fog, and little streams of water run down the walls in slow trickles. Ginny can feel her skin tingle, and the tiny red hairs on her arms stand on end when she comes here, but she does it all the same. It is true that the room would continue to exist without her visits, but this way she has proof.
And even though she can barely admit it to herself, there is a part of her that needs to go there, that needs the Chamber and the magics it contains. It just feels right to her, somehow. There is something inside herself that feels an affinity with that place and the magic there and the bloodstains on the floor and the giant snake skeleton.
###
Hades stole Persephone away to his kingdom to be his Queen. She became the terrible and merciless ruler of the dead, with an army of spirits and shades at her command.
Tom was a spirit himself, thin and incorporeal except for his power over Ginny. She was the ruler of absolutely nothing inside the Chamber, while she lay there on the cold stone floor and her life slipped away through her fingers.
But there are times when she feels that Tom is her husband, her ruler, her once and future king. He is bound to her life and her soul in a way that no other man will ever be. His cold fingers never touched her then, but her body cries out for him now and she wakes from her dreams feeling aroused and empty.
He did not touch her, never entered and abused her. He could not have, with his ghostly hands. Still, sometimes she wishes he did, when the moon is dark and the snow lies heavy outside and she is awake and wanting.
Other times, Ginny dreams of commanding armies and ruling over huddled masses with terrible power. She would sit on a jeweled throne and multitudes would bow to her command. The dreams are so vivid it is as though she has actually lived them, in this or some other life. Waking in the dormitory, the school and the constant but faraway danger of the war seem muted and pale in contrast. In those early hours when the sky is gray outside and her room is halfway between light and dark, Ginny hardly knows which life is real.
###
At her brother's wedding, after the speeches and the dancing, after everyone came and celebrated and left, Ginny sat with Harry in the garden. She couldn't think of anything she wanted to say, not really. He had to go, and she had to let him. It all seemed very clear-cut. The moon had already set and she had only the starlight to see him by, but his eyes still looked brilliantly green in the low light.
She didn't say anything. All she did was hold his hand.
Now, a part of her wishes she'd knocked him over the head with her broomstick and forced him to let her come along. But that part of her doesn't usually get to make decisions. She probably wouldn't have done it anyway.
She wonders if she would feel better, if he had gotten the chance to push her away again.
###
Her memory of that time in the Chamber is a wash of feelings and emotions and confusion, flowing together until they are not really distinct at all but all mixed up in a crazy blend of horror and pain. What she remembers most is bleeding. Her own life drained out of her as she lay there on the cold stone floor, until she was so weak that it seemed like a good idea to just close her eyes, because that would be so much easier. The ink gushed out of the diary when Harry stabbed it, flowing out in torrents across the stone floor as if the book had been alive. In a way, it was alive, and a part of Ginny wanted to cry when that proud, vibrant life was ended so savagely. And then there was the blood of the basilisk.
When Harry killed the basilisk, Ginny was lying unconscious on the floor of the cavern, and couldn't see it happen. But when she awoke, the scene was clear: a gigantic serpentine carcass with blood pouring from its mouth. Harry, jeweled sword at his side, drenched in the same red blood. Mixing with the blood, gushing floes of ink from the diary and tears from Fawkes, along with the moisture dripping from the walls. Thick, viscous life-giving liquid flowed away and soaked into the stone everywhere she looked. Ginny put her head in her hands and cried, although she could not have said who or what she was crying for: herself, stolen away from her family and betrayed by her only friend; Harry, nothing but a scared little boy with an enormous sword and drenched in dark, sticky blood; or Tom, the handsome boy that she'd come to depend on and admire and even love, so much that she'd given up everything for him.
What she remembers most clearly from the whole experience is Tom himself. His memory is in fact so vivid that he hardly feels like a memory at all, but rather like a close friend whom she might've seen last week or the day before. Some days he is more real to her than Harry.
Ginny's memory of Harry in the Chamber is blurred and obscured by myth and heroism. She can think objectively about what happened, but it hardly seems possible. A twelve-year-old child carrying the mighty sword of a Hogwarts founder, almost as long as he is tall, and killing a basilisk? It's completely absurd. There are days when she wonders if it's even possible that Harry did all that -- it seems just as likely that it was Godric Gryffindor himself, returned ten centuries later from the grave to rescue her.
###
"So to sum up," Ginny says, brusque but uncertain. "There's some kind of thing, somewhere in the castle, that has Voldemort's soul in it, and we need to find it and break it."
"Yes." Harry sounds as though this is something he does every day, which actually is probably true.
"Some thing, somewhere," Ginny repeats. Harry nods in agreement, not seeing the problem. "Well," she says, pulling out her wand. "The obvious solution is to just blow up the entire castle and then we won't have to do all that messy searching."
Harry laughs, and Ginny is pleased. Harry laughing is a wonderful sound, and one that she's missed while he's been gone.
"We don't really know what it is," he says, "but we do have some ideas." She lowers her wand, as though she's reconsidering her plan to destroy the castle. "There was one -- a cup -- that belonged to Hufflepuff," he says. "To Helga Hufflepuff, I mean, not Zacharias Smith or anything."
He smiles uncertainly, and she sees something in his eyes that warms her from the inside out. This is really Harry, and he's really here and alive and all of those things that she never thought could be true. Impulsively, she takes his hand, just wanting to touch and be touched in return. Harry looks surprised, but he doesn't pull away.
"So, Hufflepuff, and then there was this staff that was Ravenclaw's, a walking stick or something, and Slytherin's locket, so…"
"So you think the last one might be Gryffindor's," Ginny finished.
"Yeah."
Ginny thinks of Godric Gryffindor, of the way he looks in the portrait in the stairwell near the sixth floor, of his bushy red hair and shining armor and gleaming sword. She pictures that sword piercing the skull of a deadly snake, and the way that the rubies seemed to gleam even brighter with blood pouring across them. A chill runs through her body.
"The sword," she says. "It has to be the sword."
"No," he says right away, quickly enough that it's obvious he isn't thinking about it at all. "It can't be -- I used it, I --"
"I used the diary, too," Ginny says.
She can't help but picture Harry wielding the sword as a young child, making clumsy passes at the enormous serpent. In her mind, that vision is compared to another one: a handsome and confident Tom Riddle holding the sword in one hand as though he were born to it, leading his Death Eaters while the sword gleams in the air. Paradoxically, she sees Harry and Tom in a swordfight, each of them using Gryffindor's sword: one version of the sword is clean and shining beautifully, the other is covered in basilisk blood. Tom is quick and skillful, and Harry is just a little child; there is no real contest there.
She shakes her head to dispel the vision. "We have to try the sword," she says, although she knows it must be the Horcrux. "We don't know anything else of Gryffindor's."
Harry nods, accepting this logic, and Ginny breathes a sigh of relief.
###
Headmistress McGonagall is in London, arguing with the Minister, but Harry does not want to wait. This is fine with Ginny; she does not like to wait, either. Ginny straightens her tie and tries to act nonchalant as she walks down the hall, as though she walks this corridor all the time. Behind her, Harry trails along under the invisibility cloak. Near the Headmistress's office, Ginny stops to tie her shoe, and Harry whispers the password under his breath. They jump through the door and hope that no one saw them.
They are standing on a narrow step on a staircase that is rotating around in the darkness, and Harry is pressed right up against her. Although she cannot see him, she can feel his heat through her clothes and she leans her head against his invisible shoulder for a brief second, breathing in his scent and imagining that his resolve will somehow transfer to her. It almost feels real for a moment before they arrive at the office and Harry steps out and she has to follow.
The round office is the same room that it was when Dumbledore was Headmaster, but the contents are scrupulously neat now. Everything looks freshly scrubbed. The portraits on the wall murmur amongst themselves at the intrusion, but none of them speak up and Harry and Ginny do not try to talk to them. The sword is resting in a glass display case on the wall, rubies shining in the hilt the color of blood. For a moment it looks as though the hilt is covered in blood, but then Ginny blinks and the sight is gone.
Harry walks toward the case and opens the latches carefully. He opens the case but does not take out the sword, motioning to Ginny to take it in her hand. She steps toward it and grasps the hilt in one hand, lifting the ancient weapon out of its case. For a moment, nothing happens except that the jewels seem to shine more brightly.
One moment, Ginny is watching the brilliant red gleam of the rubies set in the hilt of the sword. The next moment, her vision is filled with red. She sees the Chamber again, as it was years ago. Tom holds his hands in front of his face, examining them as he grows from a spirit into a concrete form. The giant serpent coils around him. He turns to the small figure of a young girl lying prone on the ground, picking her up and cradling her in his arms. Ginny knows that the girl is her younger self, and she watches longingly. Time seems to speed up, and before her eyes the Chamber is transformed from a filthy cave to a cavern of wonder, the walls adorned with carvings. To either side of the grand statue of Slytherin, there are likenesses of her own face. And before them, a vision of a Queen: the woman in the throne is beautiful, majestic, and terrible in her power. Legions of robed wizards bow down before her. Ginny knows she's looking into the future, and when the Queen raises her head, she sees her own face. In the throne beside her is Tom, his handsome face unchanged and the familiar sharp-edged smile on his face.
"Ginny..." She hears her own voice, as if from very far away. Looking up, she meets Tom's eyes, and his lips move in time with the words she hears. Ginny's heart leaps. Tom is speaking to her again, after all this time. "Ginny," he says. "All this can be yours. It can still be. Only claim the sword as your own, and take your place at my side, Ginevra."
Blinking, she looks down at the sword. The metal has warmed to the touch of her skin, and it feels natural in her hand. Her vision is fading, but she can still see her other self holding court in the Chamber of Secrets, with Tom at her side.
"Ginny?" It is the same voice speaking, but this time when she looks up, it is Harry's lips that are moving. What has just happened? What did she see?
"Ginny?" Harry asks again. "Are you all right?"
She opens her mouth to say something, but can't think of anything appropriate. Wordlessly, she holds out her left hand toward him, and he takes it in his. His hand is warm and strong and grips hers tightly, and she holds on as best she can.
Harry's hair is sticking up in seventeen different directions, and his glasses are crooked on his face. His robes are tattered and torn, but in his face Ginny can see real concern. She thinks of the grand vision of the future she has just seen, and the very different man who was at her side there. Tom is combed and polished, his robes neat and straight. He has a commanding presence; the Chamber was filled with his followers eager to do his bidding. She thinks of the sharp corners of his smile and the way he says her name, "Ginevra," pronouncing it as though it were an insult. Next to her, Harry's eyes are full of determination and an emotion that she can't name.
Slowly, she loosens her grip and the sword falls with a clatter to the stone floor.
"Break it," Ginny says. She has made her choice.