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Ginny had just started descending the second-floor staircase of Grimmauld Place—wondering about dinner and whether she had any blackmail material good enough to make Ron let her have a go on his shiny new “congrats, you made prefect” broom—when she heard the scream. She’d grown fairly used to tuning those out this summer, but this definitely wasn’t the high, indignant shriek of Walburga Black’s portrait waking up for the millionth time. It sounded low and guttural and gutted, like someone having a limb torn off, and it was coming from above her.
In hindsight, it probably would’ve been smarter to get an adult (or at least the twins, who Ginny firmly agreed with on their status as grown, of-age wizards now that they could Apparate and cast outside of Hogwarts). But, well, she wasn’t a Gryffindor—or a Weasley—for nothing. Reversing course and pounding back up the steps two at a time, she followed the continued sounds of agony to one of the house’s innumerable sitting rooms (just how much of their precious time did “proper” purebloods spend sitting, anyway?) and threw open the door with her wand out.
”Harry—Harry—no, no, no…”
She took one look at the scene and let out a horrified, furious shriek of her own. Laying on the ground, his body crumpled and broken, blood pooling around him and neck bent at an angle that left absolutely no hope for rescue, was Harry. And just a few feet away—sprawled backward over a coffee table he’d clearly just tripped over, his own wand pointed directly at the corpse of the kind, gentle boy she had loved for years—
Him. Tom Riddle.
I knew it, I knew it, I KNEW IT!
When Ginny woke up in the hospital wing after the nightmare in the Chamber, she’d been briefly overjoyed to be rescued—and that it was Harry of all people who’d done it, who’d walked fearlessly into the depths of the school to save her when even the professors had given her up for dead. Surely this was it, the beginning of their love story, the brave knight saving his maiden from the wicked prince and his scaly monster…
But then he’d explained to her grimly, wringing his hands in his lap, that he hadn’t slain Tom Riddle and the basilisk after all. They were both still alive, they’d agreed to let her go—and in return, Harry owed them a life debt.
And so she’d watched, as Harry wrote in the diary just like she had, laughing and smiling to himself and eagerly checking it throughout the day for Tom’s responses. But he wasn’t possessed and forced to murder birds or write his own suicide note in blood; he insisted that Tom liked him, saw him as an equal.
What did Tom see in him that she’d so lacked?
Later—when Harry returned for fourth year with a living, fully-embodied Tom; when the two boys had sat with her and her brothers and Hermione and said We’re together, we’re in love, I know it might sound weird but we hope you’ll understand—she’d wondered, even more painfully, what Harry saw in Tom that she lacked.
And Tom knew it, too, he was always the one who could read her like a book. She could see it in every smug, possessive smirk he shot at her when he caught her staring at the two of them cuddling. No matter how perfect his reformed, model-student mask was for Harry, for Dumbledore, even for her own mother who seemed to have some ingrained, irrepressible compulsion to coddle polite orphan boys. He knew everything she’d felt for Harry, because she’d told him, and he took him anyway.
He took everything from her. Her wide-eyed innocence and naïveté, the fun and discovery and friendships she should have formed in her first year, her free will, control and sanity, her childhood puppy crush. And now…
He’d taken Harry’s life too, of course he had, because snakes never changed their stripes and he’d always just been biding his time.
“I’LL KILL YOU!” Ginny howled, leaping into the room between the evil young Dark Lord and poor Harry. He didn’t deserve to lay eyes on someone so loving and trusting. “HOW DARE YOU!?”
She’d seemingly surprised him enough to get a moment’s opening; he didn’t even sit up or adjust his aim to take on the new threat. But in the few seconds she debated over just what curse to cast on him—she’d taken “cleaning duty” in the Black library more than once and knew how to do plenty worse than the Bat-Bogey she used for pranks—there was a faint pop from behind her, a sound like a throat clearing. Against all her reason she spun around, turning her back to her enemy, at this tiniest of hints that Harry might still be alive and breathing.
And found herself facing…her father? But he was at work—
Arthur Weasley frowned down at her, seemingly unconcerned by all the shouting and the dead body at his feet (but where was Harry’s body now? Was her dad blocking it from view?). “I’m sorry, Ginevra,” he said, causing her to bristle with irritation at the name she hated even at a time like this. “Things cannot continue this way.”
What kind of bizarre understatement…“Sorry? Sorry? Dad, Harry’s dead, Tom killed him—!”
He crossed his arms, his face hardening into disapproval. “Enough of this,” he snapped with a vitriol she was quite sure she’d never heard from him in her entire life. “Stop playing at being a part of the war, at fighting and joining the Order alongside the boys. You are our youngest daughter and it’s time you started acting like it; we’ve clearly been too lenient letting you run wild and play Quidditch with Ron and the twins. The best thing you could do for our family would be to improve your attitude and marry well, so you can be safe and comfortable somewhere far from danger—“
“W-what?” This didn’t make any sense. All her life, she’d known that she was a bit of a struggle for her mother, her “tomboyish” (she hated that word even worse than Ginevra) nature coming as an unwelcome surprise after Molly’s long years yearning for a girl. Her dad had always been supportive, though, treating her no different than any of his sons, letting her watch and ask questions while he tinkered with gadgets Molly decried as too dangerous, making a zipped-lips gesture with his fingers as she snuck out to chase gnomes during “quiet time”. He was her safe person, when her brothers left her out or her mum nearly wept with frustration. The tiny, niggling worry that maybe secretly he felt the same, was just waiting and hoping for her to “grow out” of her “rambunctious phase” and be a gentle, proper young witch, might actually count as one of her greatest, most deeply buried fears.
Your biggest fear…Professor Lupin’s (“It’s Remus now, Ginny, please”) voice echoed in her mind from over a year ago.
Darting her eyes past her father, who was now ranting about how tiresome he’d always found it, having to indulge her childish fancies of being a hero, she spotted a large, hardwood wardrobe hanging open, the dusty state of its contents strongly suggesting it had been last opened sometime during the First War.
Tom, who she’d almost forgotten, choked and stammered behind her. “Harry…where…?”
”And you’re going to drive your poor mother into an early grave, she just wants what’s best for you—“
She tightened her grip on her wand.
“Riddikulus!”
Her father’s tirade cut off short. His curly red hair grew longer and gained significantly more gray; his face sagged under dozens of new wrinkles and an even heavier amount of badly-applied makeup. His trousers and old jumper morphed into a stiff, lacy dress that had been out of fashion even when it was brand new. The creature in front of her was now indistinguishable from a very different Weasley relative—one whose opinion Ginny had never given so much as a toss for. She threw her head back and laughed loudly.
”Nice try, Aunt Muriel. Goodbye.”
The Boggart shrieked, clawing at its high-necked collar cinched with a dingy cameo brooch, and melted unceremoniously into a puddle of old rags on the floor. Ginny took in a deep, sucking breath and stumbled backwards a few steps, flumping down hard on a velvet sofa that sent up plumes of dust and a few buzzing Doxies on impact.
Tom—still on the coffee table, but now finally getting his feet back under him and into a sitting position—made a noise of half-confusion, half relief. “What—a Boggart—? But, Harry—Harry…”
“He’s downstairs with Sirius,” she breathed, remembering now that the panic was over and she could think clearly again; Harry had been extra attentive with his godfather today, obviously worried about the man’s emotional state once he headed back to Hogwarts. He’d been in the main parlor for hours, letting Sirius teach him a highly complex game with moving figurines that the Marauders used to play together. “What you saw—and me too—yeah, it was just a stupid Boggart.” She sat up and looked at him fully. “What were you thinking, coming in here alone? Moody hasn’t even started sweeping this floor for Dark stuff yet.”
”That’s just the point,” Tom said, somehow managing to sound haughty even looking up at her from the low table with his hands on his knees, his face only just starting to regain color from its ashen, stricken state. “There’s something important in here, I can sense it—nevermind. I’m seventeen and I was a Dark artifact for fifty years, Ginny, I was fairly confident I could handle anything this drawing room could throw at me.”
”Clearly not,” she said pointedly, arching an eyebrow.
His cheeks rapidly went all the way back to full color and then further, into a high flush. “It just surprised me is all…and Harry…after the tournament last year, I…”
”So that’s your biggest fear, then?” Ginny asked, unnecessarily. “Him dying…” Tom only hesitated a little before nodding jerkily.
“…Yes,” he admitted. “Losing him in any way, really, but obviously death would be the worst of them…and it feels far too possible for my comfort, what with him back…”
‘Him’? Yourself, you mean? she thought rather savagely, but didn’t have the heart to say it aloud to the shaken young man in front of her. Instead, she mulled over the implications of what she’d just seen.
”Then you really do love him,” she said finally, realizing as she spoke that she only now truly believed it. “If you fear losing him more than your own death.”
He nodded. “More than anything.” There was a brief pause. “My own corpse was what I’d always seen before when encountering one of those things, and over time I’d grown inured to it enough to handle it without much issue; I’d usually turn it into one of those awful department-store mannequins from the ‘30s.” He snorted. “Wait, how did you know…?”
”Well, it would’ve been a relatively safe guess,” Ginny said with a roll of her eyes. “But in this case…it was actually Dumbledore who told me. He said he’d taught you back in school, and that your Boggart had never been anything but your own untimely death. That it was, what did he call it?” She smirked playfully. “The ‘rather pitiable fear of a wretched, cowardly man’.” At Tom’s outraged expression,, she added, “This was in ‘93, before you came back like this and took even him in with your charms.”
”I honestly don’t know where that old man gets off,” Tom scoffed, crossing his arms and looking extremely put out—dare Ginny say, even pouty. “Even before I returned to my body, I was, as he said himself, a former student. Speaking poorly of me to another was highly unprofessional, the man has always been an abysmal teacher…”
”He told me,” Ginny said quietly once he had trailed off into unintelligible muttering, “because Professor Lupin was concerned after I faced my Boggart in his class. Dumbledore called me to his office for a special meeting, to make sure I was recovering properly after…after the Chamber.”
Tom sucked in a sharp breath at the reminder of the unspoken history between them, the way they had technically met long before she saw him again in his new body, before he’d ever spoken or written a word to Harry. Ginny never brought it up—partly because it was just painful, and partly because she knew in her heart that if she forced a situation where Harry had to side with either her or Tom, he would not choose her and it would not be a difficult decision.
”So your Boggart was…?” he asked, his jaw tensing and muscle ticking faintly.
“You,” she confirms. “Yeah.”
She can still remember making her way nervously to the head of the line in Defense, right after Romilda’s bloody vampire and Luna’s bizarre ten-foot-tall flaming horse-thing, the Boggart shifting seamlessly into a tall, handsome boy in Slytherin prefect’s robes, smiling as his long fingers stroked a slim, black leather diary. I get very lonely sometimes too, Ginny, he’d murmured, low and smooth. It would be nice to have a friend like you. Would you like that?
She shuddered forcefully to bring herself back to the present, where the slightly disheveled young man dressed (rather absurdly, in Ginny’s opinion) in some of Bill’s old things, who both was and was not that Tom Riddle, was now giving her a considering look.
”But it isn’t any longer,” he said, probingly. “It wasn’t, just now; it was…your father?” Something dark and complicated passed over his face on the last word.
”Not my actual dad, no,” Ginny explained. “Just the idea that he—that my whole family, really—will never see me as anything more than the youngest and the only girl. That the twins and even Ron will get to grow up and join the Order eventually and know things, do things in the war, and I’ll be left behind because they just don’t trust me to fight alongside them. Seeing them get hurt would be awful enough—I don’t think I could bear it if I were just sitting on the sidelines when it happened.”
”I see.” He folded his hands under his chin and rested his elbows on his knees. He’d displayed so many different moods in the last ten minutes, all with just his arms and posture. “I suppose I never even thought about that when it comes to Harry—I always took it for a given that if he ever went into battle, I would be right by his side.” The possibility of it being otherwise seemed to disturb him.
”You’d better be,” she warned him seriously. “If you’re not actually between him and whatever’s trying to hurt him, that is. He deserves that. He deserves someone who’d give anything for him.”
He smirked. “Someone like you, you mean? I’ve seen the way you look at him, at us.”
“Yeah, and I’ve seen the way you look back. Smug, much?”
His smile widened, his ticking muscles replaced by a pair of perfect dimples. “I do enjoy winning.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for Merlin’s—no one likes a sore winner, Tom!” When he only continued to grin gloatingly, she flicked her wand back up and shot a Stinging Hex at him. He startled and let out a few old-fashioned curses that were more funny than threatening, but she still wondered for a moment if she’d perhaps pushed him too far—but then he shook his head and started to laugh, just like she had at her transformed Boggart earlier.
“You really don’t fear me anymore, do you? Little first-year Ginny would never have dared to hex me and call me names, even when I was just a book.” He almost sounded proud.
“It’s kind of hard to be afraid of someone when the most terrifying thing they’ve done all summer is lecture Kreacher on the ‘correct’ way to make dauphinoise potatoes.”
Tom scowled at the memory. “That house-elf is an incompetent menace—has been since Orion’s time. I think he was born wicked.”
Ginny shook her head at the many absurd and ironic things packed into that statement, but just then there was another set of footsteps pounding up the stairs and a familiar voice shouting through the hall outside.
”Tom? Tom! D’you have the time to come downstairs for a bit? Sirius and Remus have got me pretty well caught up on the rules of Catacombs and Chimaeras, but we need a fourth party member for a real campaign…oh, hey, Ginny!”
The way Tom’s face transformed, like one of those sunlight-activated crystal balls popular as wixen lawn decorations, when Harry’s messy-haired head popped around the side of the doorframe was truly something to marvel at, Ginny mused. Was he just happy to see him after the scare he’d had with the Boggart? Or had he looked at Harry that way all along, and she just hadn’t noticed?
”I’m coming, love,” he said, finally standing up from the coffee table like it was a throne he’d just happened to be lounging on. “But you absolutely must let me play a battlemage. You know, I think I may still have an old character sheet or two written down in the diary…”
”Good luck with that, there’s been, like, four different editions of C&C since then and Sirius says they’ve nerfed that class a ton,” Harry chirped. “Meet us in the parlor in ten minutes, we’re just getting set up!” He clattered back off down the hall like a miniature tornado, without waiting for an answer.
”Seems I may get that chance to stand between Harry and danger sooner than I expected,” Tom said to Ginny as he gathered his things, practically purring with satisfaction at the prospect. “Thank you, by the way, for your assistance earlier. But I wouldn’t linger too long alone if I were you—I can still sense a strong magical presence in here, and whatever it is is much darker than a Boggart.”
She nodded shortly and followed him out, taking the opposite direction down the corridor while he went to follow after Harry. But just as she was about to round the corner leading back to the library, she turned. ”Hey, Tom,” she called after him, and he stopped halfway down the stairs.
”Yes, Ginny?”
“You know, for what it’s worth…I’m almost positive that if he were to run into a Boggart today, it would still be his own corpse, same as always.”
His smile had nowhere near the radiance of the one he reserved for Harry, but he still looked fairly pleased in spite of himself. “I quite agree,” he said. “And speaking of fear, I do hope you continue to enjoy Arcturus’s grimoire collection—keep studying that kind of magic and you’ll be worth all six of your brothers on the battlefield.”
And before Ginny could decide whether to ask him for specific recommendations or tell him off for spying on her, he was gone, off to go into battle beside Harry.