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Split-Half Reliability: Ch 4 [HP]
Title: Split-Half Reliability
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Ginny & Tom, Harry/Ginny, Tomarry
Rating: M
Chapter Word Count: 2,760
Chapter Count: 4 / 7 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 |
Summary: Prequel to Liminality. Ginny navigates life after her humiliating first year in Hogwarts. Along the way, she discovers that she’s much less alone than she thought she was, and she has to learn how to make peace with the teenaged, wannabe Dark Lord who's taken up a permanent residence in her head. -or- When Tom’s diary is destroyed, he’s already almost completely left it. With no place else to go, Tom Marvolo Riddle is thrown back into the only other container he has a link to: Ginny Weasley.
Notes: This thing.
How do you tell your family that you're possessed? Ginny didn't manage it last time, though she tried. How do you tell your family that you're not who they thought you were, not who you thought you were?
You don't.
Tom Riddle's voice is so obvious, now that she knows it's him.
Why would you tell them? They'll never understand, anyway, and why would you need to? Haven't we been fine together for all these years?
No one else could have a voice so smooth, so reasonable. It's a voice that strangles roosters and calls forth monsters. She imagines that the snake-like Stan must have had a voice like that when he charmed that muggle woman into eating his poisoned apples.
… What?
Stan! The evil muggle in the garden!
Could you mean Satan?
That could be it. Ginny never claimed to be an expert on muggles, after all.
And what poisoned apples?
Or perhaps they were rotten or wormy. Ginny can't quite remember… There was some reason the muggle lady wasn't meant to eat them, anyway.
How very literal the magical world is. All evil comes marked with some physical sign.
Tom Riddle hadn't come marked. He'd been handsome, charming, perfect.
I also wasn't evil. Cruel, yes, but not evil. Not then. Not yet.
And the apples in the muggle story? They were supposed to be evil?
They were a temptation. Forbidden, but desired, and more desired because they were forbidden.
But were they evil?
I suppose that's a matter of perspective.
And was Tom Riddle evil? He'd made Ginny do evil, terrible things. Surely that meant he was evil.
In First Year, when I was bound to the diary, I made you do terrible things, yes. What have I done that's so evil since then?
Ginny fought against You Know Who and his worst Death Eaters. Ginny protected Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, You Know Who's greatest enemy. Ginny stood up against Umbridge, who was arguably at the very least an ally of You Know Who's passively if not actively. Ginny did all of these things, and Tom Riddle made no move to stop her.
I helped.
But that makes no sense. Why would You Know Who fight against himself?
It wasn't supposed to be like this. I wasn't supposed to be like this. I never wanted to be like this.
Tom Riddle has been repeating those and similar sentiments, over and over again. He sounds bewildered and betrayed.
Ginny is starting to believe him.
---
Ginny doesn’t tell her family.
She doesn’t tell anyone.
---
Ginny is the seventh child of her parents, and the only girl. This means that she is subjected to embarrassments and humiliations unknown by her brothers.
Having to take a turn in the kitchen is hardly the sort of torture you’re making it out to be.
None of Ginny’s brothers were ever forced to learn to cook. In fact, even the ones who’d been interested in cooking had been chased out of the kitchen by Mum. But Ginny, who had neither the inclination nor any particular skill, was nevertheless stood at the counter all summer long every summer in an endless cycle of chopping and stirring and basting and mashing. And what did the boys do? They got to degnome the garden!
Disgusting. I admit, being forced to work in kitchens brings back some unpleasant memories for me, but at least it isn’t filthy.
Meanwhile, Mum yatters on about this and that and shows Ginny wand movements and spells that she isn’t strictly supposed to be performing out of school but doesn’t care to even if she could.
Her voice is grating. I could quiet her, you know. It wouldn’t hurt her, and she wouldn’t notice.
And the temptation begins. Tom Riddle and his wormy apples.
Where’s the harm?
“Mum, can’t I go outside? I’ve finished all the chopping.”
You haven’t done the spring onions. Also, your chopping is atrocious.
Mum comes over and peers down at the counter. “Where are the spring onions?”
“Mum, really?”
“Once they’re finished I suppose you can go. Honestly, children these days! I’m sure I never complained anywhere near as much about doing my chores.”
“I could degnome the garden.”
“Ron’s doing that.”
“I could rehang the attic door.”
“Fred and George are doing that. What are you even talking about? Anyway, how are you ever going to impress a young wizard if you can’t cook?”
Ginny grinds her teeth.
Harry can cook. Can’t he?
Ginny resentfully turns back to the chopping board.
Let me.
No matter how frustrated and furious she is—and oh is she ever—she’s not going to let Dark Lord Jr. mess around with Mum’s brain. Merlin knows it’s in a precarious enough state as it is.
Not that. Let me do the chopping.
That sounds… like a terrible idea. Ginny still remembers—or, more factually and relevantly, doesn’t remember—her first year, when she would wake up in a dress streaked with chicken’s blood and no idea how she’d gotten there.
I wouldn’t have to block you out. We could both be there, I would just be the one with motor control. You could take it back.
How could she trust to that sort of promise? What reassurances could he even offer her? Why would he ever think that she would be willing to put herself in that sort of danger?
“Ginny, dear, the onions. Chop, chop!”
...It’s true, there are worse things than death and possession. Ginny sighs. If Tom Riddle agrees to just chop the onions with her, then she supposes that’s fine.
Chop, chop.
Tom’s voice is cheery in her mind. It’s strange, too… she remembers the feeling that she was sinking, before, with the world just fading away around her, but when Tom takes control this time, she still feels like herself. She still feels her arms and muscles moving, she feels the knife in her hand—though the grip, the grip is different—and though she’s not consciously aware of telling her body to move the way it is, it somehow still feels as though she’s the one making the decisions, just… with a different part of her mind than usual.
I’m not just a foreign invader, the way I was in your first year. I’m a part of you. I feel with you, I breath with you. At first, I didn’t even know I wasn’t you. The backlash of my… migration, it was very jarring. It took me some time to remember myself.
But even back then, she’d been able to feel him. She knows that now, knows that not all of the overwhelming emotions, the confusion, the mismatched memories, the gut reactions… not all of those had come from her.
“Why, Ginny! They’re perfect! I knew you could do it, if you only tried!”
Ginny looks down at the cutting board, at the tidy, uniform spring onions. “Thanks, Mum!” she hears herself say. “Am I all finished, then?”
“Oh, I suppose so. Off you go, then!”
Ginny smiles at her mum. It’s a calm, confident smile that she started wearing back in her second year at Hogwarts, one that she’s been using more and more frequently as she’s gotten older.
Is it because Tom is getting stronger? Is he taking her over more? Or is it that, even as he becomes powerful and aware enough to be a distinct voice in her mind, he’s becoming more and more a part of her, as the vessel provides form to the substance within.
Weren’t you going to take over again?
Ginny—Ginny thinks it might be nice to simply rest for a while.
If you’re sure.
Ginny isn’t sure about anything. Not anymore.
---
Dating Michael had been amusing and bland last year, but that was before she’d become aware that the antagonistic echoes ringing through her mind were actually impressions made by a different person. Dating Dean with Tom Riddle in her head is… awkward.
Why are you even wasting your time on him?
Ginny likes Dean. She likes him a lot. Friendly, funny, sweet, handsome—not bad for a second boyfriend.
Tom really doesn’t like Dean.
Tom has been coming forward more and more—sitting through some of her classes, studying in the library, socialising in the Slug Club, while she rests, aware but passive. There have been times when Ginny hasn’t been quite certain as to who was in charge; they were both there, thinking and moving seamlessly.
And then, whenever Dean is nearby, Tom retreats into the depths of Ginny’s mind, sulking and determinedly ignoring the outside world. When Ginny reminisces about the feeling of Dean’s tongue sliding through her mouth or his hands stroking her thighs just above the bottom of her skirt, Tom throws a hissy fit and hides himself away again.
You mean that I issue dignified and logical objections to being subjected to those nauseating memories.
Ginny wonders if her growing mental discipline has any benefits. Surely the ability to warn a part of her mind that she’s going to be busy daydreaming about her boyfriend has to be useful to something.
Occlumency, perhaps.
Yes, something like that.
And then, Ginny isn’t dating Dean anymore.
Then, Ginny is dating Harry instead.
Lovely Harry. Sweet Harry. Perfect Harry.
And Tom is no longer interested in nor willing to hide in the recesses of her mind while she spends time with her boyfriend. Now, Tom wants in.
When Ginny is with Harry, she’s no longer Ginny Weasley. She isn’t Tom Riddle, either. She’s something else. Something plural. Something dangerous.
“Harry,” begins Ginny hesitantly.
“Hmm?”
They’re lying curled up against each other on a couch in the Gryffindor common room, ostensibly studying for their respective classes, but primarily simply enjoying the silence and one another’s warmth.
“Would you still be, you know, interested in me if I were back to the way I was in First Year?” she asks.
Harry blinks at her.
Harry isn’t as wild and furious as he’d been the year before, but he’s still as intense as he’s always been, even in leisure. Ginny knows that his cool, green stare is widely considered to be discomfiting—even creepy—but she also knows that the shadows he holds within are all cast from the outside. His darkness, what there is of it, is nothing to be afraid of.
“You mean,” says Harry slowly, “if you were terribly shy around me? Or if you were running around possessed by Voldemort, opening the Chamber of Secrets?”
Ginny shrugs uncomfortably, averting her eyes. “The second one.”
Harry laughs. “Well, that’s alright, then. If you were shy, that’d be a deal-breaker, but I think between the two of us, we can handle the odd possession, don’t you?”
Ginny can’t bring herself to smile, and Harry sighs. “It’s a strange question, Gin. I’m not sure how to answer it seriously. I’m not sure what you’re thinking of. But if you were in trouble, of course I wouldn’t stop liking you. Of course I’d try to help you.”
“It’s not—” Ginny makes a face. “What I mean is, I spent a whole year with—him. He changed me. There are parts of me that are like him.”
“I’ve spent my whole life with him, it seems,” says Harry, nodding at her slowly. “He’s left his mark in me too.”
Ginny feels a rush of delight flood through her, and she quickly shoves it down, willing Tom to please shush. If it was from Tom. Was it from Tom? Somehow, the thought of sharing this with Harry, having been possessed by the same person, it feels… it feels filthy. And delicious. Filthy and delicious, and Ginny’s not sure that feeling is coming from Tom at all. “He wasn’t all bad,” she says.
Harry smiles at her with shadowed eyes. “No. I suppose not.”
---
“Harry,” says Ginny, a week later. They’re walking together by the lake, hand-in-hand.
Stop this. It’s perfectly reasonable for couples—couples still in school, I might add—to keep secrets from one another. And this is hardly such a huge one.
Two people sharing a single body, and one of those people being the teenaged Lord Voldemort? How is that not a huge secret?
It’s not one that will ever harm him, is it? In the interests of practicality, we are the same person, are we not? And though we have our disagreements, you and I, I will always keep him safe, just as you will.
“Ginny,” says Harry. He smiles at her, but he seems distracted, just as he has ever since he returned from Dumbledore’s office last night.
“Would you still like me if I were two people?” Ginny blurts out.
...What. Don’t you dare tell him.
Ginny hasn’t told anyone. She’s not going to tell Harry. But maybe she can plant the seeds…
Harry’s eyes crinkle at the corners as his smile settles into something more real. “I… have no idea how to respond to that,” he says.
Ginny licks her lips. “When… when I was possessed…”
Just like that, Harry’s eyes darken again, and he looks away.
Ginny winces. She knows Tom is right, and that she should just drop this, but… she also doesn’t want to lie to Harry—wonderful Harry. And she knows that Tom wants, desperately, to be known by him, despite the impossibility of that ever working out in his favour. “I just mean, what if I were always like that?”
Harry’s lips compress. “Just like I said before, I would still like you, and I’d do everything in my power to get you out of it.”
“But what if I wasn’t doing anything? Not strangling roosters, not opening the Chamber of Secrets, not… not anything. What then?”
Harry snorts. “A friendly possession? Is even that possible?” His lips are curled nearly into a sneer.
Ginny swallows. “I don’t know, just… Sometimes, I feel as though he never left me. I feel as though I still hold a piece of him within me. So… What if I were two people?”
Harry stiffens and doesn’t answer. They continue their slow trek around the link, circling back toward the school.
Finally, as they’re nearing the main entrance, Harry says abruptly, “I suppose I couldn’t blame you, if that were the case.” He looks at her, his green eyes as cold as the Arctic Ocean. “After all, that would make two of us. Or four of us.”
He pulls away from her then to make his way into the castle alone.
Ginny stands by the doors for a long moment.
So, he’s still bound to the Dark Lord. That would explain the dreams, and the visions.
Ginny shudders. The thought of those red eyes and that alien face seeing her private moments with Harry…
Four of us, indeed.
---
Harry finds her again later that evening.
“I’m sorry for blowing up at you, earlier,” he says. “I know you’re still trying to work through what happened to you back then, it’s just… your questions hit a little close to home, I suppose.”
Ginny brushes her hair out of her eyes and winces when her fingers get hopelessly tangled in red, wiry strands halfway through. “I get it. It just feels as though we have this in common. As though you’re the only person who could understand.”
Harry smiles at her oddly. “Yes,” he says. “You, me, and Voldemort. Bosom buddies.”
“No, no,” Ginny insists. “You, me, snakey Voldemort, and cute Voldemort!”
Harry snorts a laugh and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Right, yeah,” he says drily. “My mistake.”
Ginny reaches out and slides her hand into his pocket to twine her fingers with his. She has to step in close to do it, and she’s grown tall enough now that she has to look down to meet his eyes. She likes it that way.
We both do.
Harry inhales sharply and turns bright red.
Ginny experimentally nudges her hand over a little, and Harry clears his throat and carefully pulls her hand from his pocket and simply holds it in his own.
Tom has no body, but somehow he still manages to pout.
“Thank you, Ginny,” says Harry seriously, and Ginny feels her heart swell and fall at the same time.
Harry shouldn’t be thanking her, but how wonderful it is to have him do it.
When their lips meet, Ginny is elated. Tom is elated.
Surely, if both Ginny and Tom agree on something, this can’t be a bad decision?
Surely.
—
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Ginny & Tom, Harry/Ginny, Tomarry
Rating: M
Chapter Word Count: 2,760
Chapter Count: 4 / 7 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 |
Summary: Prequel to Liminality. Ginny navigates life after her humiliating first year in Hogwarts. Along the way, she discovers that she’s much less alone than she thought she was, and she has to learn how to make peace with the teenaged, wannabe Dark Lord who's taken up a permanent residence in her head. -or- When Tom’s diary is destroyed, he’s already almost completely left it. With no place else to go, Tom Marvolo Riddle is thrown back into the only other container he has a link to: Ginny Weasley.
Notes: This thing.
How do you tell your family that you're possessed? Ginny didn't manage it last time, though she tried. How do you tell your family that you're not who they thought you were, not who you thought you were?
You don't.
Tom Riddle's voice is so obvious, now that she knows it's him.
Why would you tell them? They'll never understand, anyway, and why would you need to? Haven't we been fine together for all these years?
No one else could have a voice so smooth, so reasonable. It's a voice that strangles roosters and calls forth monsters. She imagines that the snake-like Stan must have had a voice like that when he charmed that muggle woman into eating his poisoned apples.
… What?
Stan! The evil muggle in the garden!
Could you mean Satan?
That could be it. Ginny never claimed to be an expert on muggles, after all.
And what poisoned apples?
Or perhaps they were rotten or wormy. Ginny can't quite remember… There was some reason the muggle lady wasn't meant to eat them, anyway.
How very literal the magical world is. All evil comes marked with some physical sign.
Tom Riddle hadn't come marked. He'd been handsome, charming, perfect.
I also wasn't evil. Cruel, yes, but not evil. Not then. Not yet.
And the apples in the muggle story? They were supposed to be evil?
They were a temptation. Forbidden, but desired, and more desired because they were forbidden.
But were they evil?
I suppose that's a matter of perspective.
And was Tom Riddle evil? He'd made Ginny do evil, terrible things. Surely that meant he was evil.
In First Year, when I was bound to the diary, I made you do terrible things, yes. What have I done that's so evil since then?
Ginny fought against You Know Who and his worst Death Eaters. Ginny protected Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, You Know Who's greatest enemy. Ginny stood up against Umbridge, who was arguably at the very least an ally of You Know Who's passively if not actively. Ginny did all of these things, and Tom Riddle made no move to stop her.
I helped.
But that makes no sense. Why would You Know Who fight against himself?
It wasn't supposed to be like this. I wasn't supposed to be like this. I never wanted to be like this.
Tom Riddle has been repeating those and similar sentiments, over and over again. He sounds bewildered and betrayed.
Ginny is starting to believe him.
Ginny doesn’t tell her family.
She doesn’t tell anyone.
Ginny is the seventh child of her parents, and the only girl. This means that she is subjected to embarrassments and humiliations unknown by her brothers.
Having to take a turn in the kitchen is hardly the sort of torture you’re making it out to be.
None of Ginny’s brothers were ever forced to learn to cook. In fact, even the ones who’d been interested in cooking had been chased out of the kitchen by Mum. But Ginny, who had neither the inclination nor any particular skill, was nevertheless stood at the counter all summer long every summer in an endless cycle of chopping and stirring and basting and mashing. And what did the boys do? They got to degnome the garden!
Disgusting. I admit, being forced to work in kitchens brings back some unpleasant memories for me, but at least it isn’t filthy.
Meanwhile, Mum yatters on about this and that and shows Ginny wand movements and spells that she isn’t strictly supposed to be performing out of school but doesn’t care to even if she could.
Her voice is grating. I could quiet her, you know. It wouldn’t hurt her, and she wouldn’t notice.
And the temptation begins. Tom Riddle and his wormy apples.
Where’s the harm?
“Mum, can’t I go outside? I’ve finished all the chopping.”
You haven’t done the spring onions. Also, your chopping is atrocious.
Mum comes over and peers down at the counter. “Where are the spring onions?”
“Mum, really?”
“Once they’re finished I suppose you can go. Honestly, children these days! I’m sure I never complained anywhere near as much about doing my chores.”
“I could degnome the garden.”
“Ron’s doing that.”
“I could rehang the attic door.”
“Fred and George are doing that. What are you even talking about? Anyway, how are you ever going to impress a young wizard if you can’t cook?”
Ginny grinds her teeth.
Harry can cook. Can’t he?
Ginny resentfully turns back to the chopping board.
Let me.
No matter how frustrated and furious she is—and oh is she ever—she’s not going to let Dark Lord Jr. mess around with Mum’s brain. Merlin knows it’s in a precarious enough state as it is.
Not that. Let me do the chopping.
That sounds… like a terrible idea. Ginny still remembers—or, more factually and relevantly, doesn’t remember—her first year, when she would wake up in a dress streaked with chicken’s blood and no idea how she’d gotten there.
I wouldn’t have to block you out. We could both be there, I would just be the one with motor control. You could take it back.
How could she trust to that sort of promise? What reassurances could he even offer her? Why would he ever think that she would be willing to put herself in that sort of danger?
“Ginny, dear, the onions. Chop, chop!”
...It’s true, there are worse things than death and possession. Ginny sighs. If Tom Riddle agrees to just chop the onions with her, then she supposes that’s fine.
Chop, chop.
Tom’s voice is cheery in her mind. It’s strange, too… she remembers the feeling that she was sinking, before, with the world just fading away around her, but when Tom takes control this time, she still feels like herself. She still feels her arms and muscles moving, she feels the knife in her hand—though the grip, the grip is different—and though she’s not consciously aware of telling her body to move the way it is, it somehow still feels as though she’s the one making the decisions, just… with a different part of her mind than usual.
I’m not just a foreign invader, the way I was in your first year. I’m a part of you. I feel with you, I breath with you. At first, I didn’t even know I wasn’t you. The backlash of my… migration, it was very jarring. It took me some time to remember myself.
But even back then, she’d been able to feel him. She knows that now, knows that not all of the overwhelming emotions, the confusion, the mismatched memories, the gut reactions… not all of those had come from her.
“Why, Ginny! They’re perfect! I knew you could do it, if you only tried!”
Ginny looks down at the cutting board, at the tidy, uniform spring onions. “Thanks, Mum!” she hears herself say. “Am I all finished, then?”
“Oh, I suppose so. Off you go, then!”
Ginny smiles at her mum. It’s a calm, confident smile that she started wearing back in her second year at Hogwarts, one that she’s been using more and more frequently as she’s gotten older.
Is it because Tom is getting stronger? Is he taking her over more? Or is it that, even as he becomes powerful and aware enough to be a distinct voice in her mind, he’s becoming more and more a part of her, as the vessel provides form to the substance within.
Weren’t you going to take over again?
Ginny—Ginny thinks it might be nice to simply rest for a while.
If you’re sure.
Ginny isn’t sure about anything. Not anymore.
Dating Michael had been amusing and bland last year, but that was before she’d become aware that the antagonistic echoes ringing through her mind were actually impressions made by a different person. Dating Dean with Tom Riddle in her head is… awkward.
Why are you even wasting your time on him?
Ginny likes Dean. She likes him a lot. Friendly, funny, sweet, handsome—not bad for a second boyfriend.
Tom really doesn’t like Dean.
Tom has been coming forward more and more—sitting through some of her classes, studying in the library, socialising in the Slug Club, while she rests, aware but passive. There have been times when Ginny hasn’t been quite certain as to who was in charge; they were both there, thinking and moving seamlessly.
And then, whenever Dean is nearby, Tom retreats into the depths of Ginny’s mind, sulking and determinedly ignoring the outside world. When Ginny reminisces about the feeling of Dean’s tongue sliding through her mouth or his hands stroking her thighs just above the bottom of her skirt, Tom throws a hissy fit and hides himself away again.
You mean that I issue dignified and logical objections to being subjected to those nauseating memories.
Ginny wonders if her growing mental discipline has any benefits. Surely the ability to warn a part of her mind that she’s going to be busy daydreaming about her boyfriend has to be useful to something.
Occlumency, perhaps.
Yes, something like that.
And then, Ginny isn’t dating Dean anymore.
Then, Ginny is dating Harry instead.
Lovely Harry. Sweet Harry. Perfect Harry.
And Tom is no longer interested in nor willing to hide in the recesses of her mind while she spends time with her boyfriend. Now, Tom wants in.
When Ginny is with Harry, she’s no longer Ginny Weasley. She isn’t Tom Riddle, either. She’s something else. Something plural. Something dangerous.
“Harry,” begins Ginny hesitantly.
“Hmm?”
They’re lying curled up against each other on a couch in the Gryffindor common room, ostensibly studying for their respective classes, but primarily simply enjoying the silence and one another’s warmth.
“Would you still be, you know, interested in me if I were back to the way I was in First Year?” she asks.
Harry blinks at her.
Harry isn’t as wild and furious as he’d been the year before, but he’s still as intense as he’s always been, even in leisure. Ginny knows that his cool, green stare is widely considered to be discomfiting—even creepy—but she also knows that the shadows he holds within are all cast from the outside. His darkness, what there is of it, is nothing to be afraid of.
“You mean,” says Harry slowly, “if you were terribly shy around me? Or if you were running around possessed by Voldemort, opening the Chamber of Secrets?”
Ginny shrugs uncomfortably, averting her eyes. “The second one.”
Harry laughs. “Well, that’s alright, then. If you were shy, that’d be a deal-breaker, but I think between the two of us, we can handle the odd possession, don’t you?”
Ginny can’t bring herself to smile, and Harry sighs. “It’s a strange question, Gin. I’m not sure how to answer it seriously. I’m not sure what you’re thinking of. But if you were in trouble, of course I wouldn’t stop liking you. Of course I’d try to help you.”
“It’s not—” Ginny makes a face. “What I mean is, I spent a whole year with—him. He changed me. There are parts of me that are like him.”
“I’ve spent my whole life with him, it seems,” says Harry, nodding at her slowly. “He’s left his mark in me too.”
Ginny feels a rush of delight flood through her, and she quickly shoves it down, willing Tom to please shush. If it was from Tom. Was it from Tom? Somehow, the thought of sharing this with Harry, having been possessed by the same person, it feels… it feels filthy. And delicious. Filthy and delicious, and Ginny’s not sure that feeling is coming from Tom at all. “He wasn’t all bad,” she says.
Harry smiles at her with shadowed eyes. “No. I suppose not.”
“Harry,” says Ginny, a week later. They’re walking together by the lake, hand-in-hand.
Stop this. It’s perfectly reasonable for couples—couples still in school, I might add—to keep secrets from one another. And this is hardly such a huge one.
Two people sharing a single body, and one of those people being the teenaged Lord Voldemort? How is that not a huge secret?
It’s not one that will ever harm him, is it? In the interests of practicality, we are the same person, are we not? And though we have our disagreements, you and I, I will always keep him safe, just as you will.
“Ginny,” says Harry. He smiles at her, but he seems distracted, just as he has ever since he returned from Dumbledore’s office last night.
“Would you still like me if I were two people?” Ginny blurts out.
...What. Don’t you dare tell him.
Ginny hasn’t told anyone. She’s not going to tell Harry. But maybe she can plant the seeds…
Harry’s eyes crinkle at the corners as his smile settles into something more real. “I… have no idea how to respond to that,” he says.
Ginny licks her lips. “When… when I was possessed…”
Just like that, Harry’s eyes darken again, and he looks away.
Ginny winces. She knows Tom is right, and that she should just drop this, but… she also doesn’t want to lie to Harry—wonderful Harry. And she knows that Tom wants, desperately, to be known by him, despite the impossibility of that ever working out in his favour. “I just mean, what if I were always like that?”
Harry’s lips compress. “Just like I said before, I would still like you, and I’d do everything in my power to get you out of it.”
“But what if I wasn’t doing anything? Not strangling roosters, not opening the Chamber of Secrets, not… not anything. What then?”
Harry snorts. “A friendly possession? Is even that possible?” His lips are curled nearly into a sneer.
Ginny swallows. “I don’t know, just… Sometimes, I feel as though he never left me. I feel as though I still hold a piece of him within me. So… What if I were two people?”
Harry stiffens and doesn’t answer. They continue their slow trek around the link, circling back toward the school.
Finally, as they’re nearing the main entrance, Harry says abruptly, “I suppose I couldn’t blame you, if that were the case.” He looks at her, his green eyes as cold as the Arctic Ocean. “After all, that would make two of us. Or four of us.”
He pulls away from her then to make his way into the castle alone.
Ginny stands by the doors for a long moment.
So, he’s still bound to the Dark Lord. That would explain the dreams, and the visions.
Ginny shudders. The thought of those red eyes and that alien face seeing her private moments with Harry…
Four of us, indeed.
Harry finds her again later that evening.
“I’m sorry for blowing up at you, earlier,” he says. “I know you’re still trying to work through what happened to you back then, it’s just… your questions hit a little close to home, I suppose.”
Ginny brushes her hair out of her eyes and winces when her fingers get hopelessly tangled in red, wiry strands halfway through. “I get it. It just feels as though we have this in common. As though you’re the only person who could understand.”
Harry smiles at her oddly. “Yes,” he says. “You, me, and Voldemort. Bosom buddies.”
“No, no,” Ginny insists. “You, me, snakey Voldemort, and cute Voldemort!”
Harry snorts a laugh and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Right, yeah,” he says drily. “My mistake.”
Ginny reaches out and slides her hand into his pocket to twine her fingers with his. She has to step in close to do it, and she’s grown tall enough now that she has to look down to meet his eyes. She likes it that way.
We both do.
Harry inhales sharply and turns bright red.
Ginny experimentally nudges her hand over a little, and Harry clears his throat and carefully pulls her hand from his pocket and simply holds it in his own.
Tom has no body, but somehow he still manages to pout.
“Thank you, Ginny,” says Harry seriously, and Ginny feels her heart swell and fall at the same time.
Harry shouldn’t be thanking her, but how wonderful it is to have him do it.
When their lips meet, Ginny is elated. Tom is elated.
Surely, if both Ginny and Tom agree on something, this can’t be a bad decision?
Surely.
—