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Her hands shook, so she closed the book. No, she would not be getting this leather-bound journal for the year. It was too familiar, too similar. The feeling of the binding sits too heavy in her hands, the pages are too dulled by age. She tosses it back on the pile of journals as though it burned her. In some ways, it did. Burned her eyes with tears, burned her mind with the memories.
“I don't understand why you insist on buying a new one every year.” The soft, familiar voice whispers in her ear. “You're just going to burn it at the end anyway. Why bother writing when you can talk to me directly?”
Ginny shivers, gooseflesh raising across her arms. The twenty-one year old woman wraps her arms around herself tightly. She wishes for a moment for her curtain of long red hair. But she had shorn it off years ago, and kept it shaved now. It had been necessary. The long hair had carried with it the smell of him, the phantom touches of ghostly fingers pushing back the long locks, the kisses dropped on upturned head. Better to lose that than keep a fake shield that the wind could whip away at any moment.
“Don't ignore my Ginny. It only makes it worse.” He laughs again in her ear and she can almost feel his warm breath against her skin. Sickness rolls within her. “I thought you liked it when I spoke to you. When I chased away the darkness.” His fingers trail across her neck and the emptiness of Flourish and Blotts feels too crowded. Her hands clench, her nails digging in tightly, and she darts away from the back corner and out the front door.
The crowded streets of Diagon Alley give her room to breathe. She can pretend that the touches are just brushes of the many strangers she can see. Her head clears, his phantom touches are gone, and the last warmth of the summer sun before autumn falls kisses her pale skin in a way that removes his butterfly kisses. She breathes in deeply, in with relief. Freedom. Here she is free.
“Oh Ginny,” his voice is distant now, but it still reaches her through the soft happiness, “you know that's not true. You'll be free a day, a week, a month, but you know I'll always come back. Beg me to come back.” She feels the ghost of lips across her temple and she shudders violently. “I'll always be here for you, my Ginevra.”
She can get a journal tomorrow. Now she just wants to go home. Be home, be safe. Ginny pushes her way through the crowds and in to the Leaky Cauldron. She keeps her head down. It's been a year since she stopped playing for the Holyhead Harpies, but some people still recognize her. Some people still try to talk to her, ask for an autograph, when all she wants to be is alone. She's never understood Harry better. In many ways, they're more similar now than they ever were before.
Ducking in to the fireplace, she throws a handful of floo powder down and disappears in a swirl of green flames.
The Burrow welcomed her like a blanket. It enveloped her in it's warmth, offered her it's comfort. Her mother was working on dinner in the kitchen, her father was working on his quarterly reports from home in the living room. It was the same as always, a welcome humdrum in a world that was still swinging wildly on it's axis on both a global and personal level for Ginny. She did not regret taking the short straw and staying at home with their parents when all her brothers moved out. Once she might have, but now it just made her feel safe.
She knew she wasn't safe, but at least here she could pretend. At least here the silence reigned the longest.
Quietly she moved up the stairs to her bedroom. She wished she could call it her sanctuary, but never again could it be that. She sat on her bed and gazed at the cracked mirror that rested against the wall, remembering the first day he came back to her.
Everyone had left. The house was silent after the time it had taken to recuperate after the Battle of Hogwarts. She had stood in her bedroom then too, gazing at herself in the mirror. Gazed at how she had changed. Time had made her wiser, hardship had made her stronger, and she had always been bold. It felt strange though, to know that theoretically, peace was upon them at last. There wasn't happiness, not yet, but there was no overarching violence. There was only the future.
She smiled at her reflection. Her future would be bright, and she would blossom.
“You've already blossomed so much, Ginevra.”
The voice had been so real she had whirled around, hand on her wand as she stared around her room with wild eyes. She brandished her wand in self-defense. “Where are you.” She had snarled, brown eyes wide.
“Where I've always been Ginevra.” He had whispered to her, and she had shivered as she turned back behind her, as though hands guided her to look back at the mirror. “With you, beside you, watching you.”
He smiled at her in the mirror, his arms around her waist, holding her close. His chin rested on her shoulder, and she could almost imagine she felt the weight of his phantom form as he smiled at her coldly. He hadn't changed from her first year. Handsome, with his cold cold eyes and his dark smile. Sixteen year old Tom Riddle, a nightmare from her past, draped himself like a cloak across her again.
She had screamed, her magic lashing out and cracking the mirror across his sharp cheekbones.
Now she could see him in the cracks again. He appeared to be twenty now, having aged with her. He was laying across her bed, a book held in hand. One of her books, a muggle study of PTSD and hallucinations. He smiled at her when he caught her eye. “This again? Ginevra, my Ginevra, you know I'm so much more than that.”
“Shut up.” She whispered.
Tom put the book to the side and she watched as he leaned forward to wrap an arm around her waist, closed her eyes as his lips trailed across her neck. “Why are you so afraid of the truth?” He murmured. “You only hate me when you remember the past. Why not look to the future?” His hand splayed across her stomach, his gentle kisses turned to soft bites on her collarbone and she bit back the groan that fought against her lips. “Why not remember how good I can make things feel. How happy I can make you.” He squeezed her hip as his hand drew back across her skin. “I'm the only one who understands you.”
Ginny wished she could deny him. Wish she could push him away, but her head lolled back and she stared up at the ceiling as he continued to caress her over her clothes. He was the only one she could reveal herself to. Her fears, her nightmares, her desires and her dreams. He was the only one who could wring wails of completion from her, when he put his mind to it.
Every word she wrote made it's way back to him, every thought she had was shared with him. Her eyes fluttered as his fingers teased the hem of her shirt.
“Ginny! Dinner's ready!” Her mother's voice shattered the silence. She opened her eyes and Tom was gone, her reflection was alone in the mirror. She stood, shaking herself.
She needed to ground herself in the present, in reality. She grit her teeth and pushed herself up off the bed. She could ignore him, she could teach herself to work through these hallucinations. With long strides she walked out of her bedroom and down the stairs. And she ignored the fact that her PTSD book lay open on her bed, the pages fluttering as though touched by a breeze in the closed off room.