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Split-Half Reliability: Ch 7 [HP]
Title: Split-Half Reliability
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Ginny & Tom, Harry/Ginny, Tomarry
Rating: M
Chapter Word Count: 1,147
Chapter Count: 7 / 7 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6
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.
Ginny makes the team. Tom makes friends.
It should have been impossible, to see their wildly different dreams through, as though one body could exist in two places at once. And yet, they were managing. Ginny goes to practice, moves up in the ranks, plays as a replacement player, moves up in the ranks, plays on the first string. And after she drags her bruised and exhausted body home, Tom spends the evenings pouring over legal documentation, sending letters, and spending time with carefully selected people with carefully selected connections to witches and wizards with political sway.
Tom makes considerable headway placing foundations for some of his farther-reaching goals, but perhaps his greatest behind the scenes success to date was when he said to Hermione over casual drinks, “Is it true that you didn’t know how to write with a quill before coming to Hogwarts? Wow! You’d think there’d be a class for that or something!”
All he had to do then was lean back and watch Hermione single-handedly move mountains.
---
“What are you doing here?” asks Harry, his eyebrows raised. He looks around the ministry atrium as though expecting dark wizards to spring up from behind the worn Health and Safety posters decorating the walls.
Ginny frowns at him, mock severely. “What’s this? Can’t a witch pick her wizard up from work and spirit him off to a romantic date?”
Harry quirks a grin. “That depends. Is the witch paying? She’s the famous Quidditch player. I’m just a lowly ministry employee.”
“I suppose I could be persuaded to cover the tab,” says Tom, and Ginny’s eyes fall to half mast. “But I might expect to walk you home if I do.”
Harry snorts a laugh and follow’s Ginny out of the ministry. “You’ve been ‘walking me home’ after nearly every date we’ve been on, so I suppose that might be a reasonable enough expectation,” Harry answers dryly. Despite his seeming nonchalance, his cheeks are slightly flushed, and Tom is so smug about it that Ginny almost rolls her eyes.
I wonder how he’d react to a bouquet.
Ginny flashes Harry a grin to cover up the sudden wistfulness that washes over her.
“Next time, I’ll bring you flowers,” she promises, feeling strange.
“That’s fine,” says Harry breezily. “I’m rather fond of peonies, just so you know.”
Tom huffs out a delighted laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
---
Dating Harry is amazing.
Or at least, it’s usually amazing.
It’s sometimes amazing.
It’s always amazing. What are you complaining over? Haven’t you been in love with him for nearly half your life? You have. It was your crush that made me think of him this way in the first place, back when I couldn’t tell your feelings from mine, and it was your crush that gave me a context for my own emotions when I finally started to become aware of myself again.
Ginny is in love with Harry. Tom is in love with Harry. One or both of them is in love with Harry.
What’s the difference?
Ginny is Ginny, and Tom is Tom, but there’s only one body between them. And so, no matter where the emotions come from, there’s only one heart to race, only one stomach to twist, only ten toes to curl. What’s felt by one of them is felt by both of them. So does it matter where the emotions come from?
It didn’t used to, really. But as months pass, and years pass, Ginny starts to think that maybe it does.
Ginny has grown used to Tom always being a part of her, but she starts to wonder whether or not it has to be this way. Could they build a body for Tom? Grant him full autonomy? Is that even possible?
Unlikely. At least, not with the sort of spells you’d be willing to use.
That’s not fair, though. Ginny had agreed to learning and casting illegal dark spells during the war, and Ginny has been researching dark magic with Tom since they left school. Ginny isn’t an innocent little girl anymore. She knows what good and evil are, and she’s confident in her ability to work out which is which.
These spells would be darker. Much darker. You balked at the idea of the Killing Curse. Are you prepared to indulge in human sacrifices?
They could find other spells, surely, or invent new ones.
Perhaps.
It isn’t like Tom to not jump on the idea of spell invention. Pushing the boundaries of magic and knowledge is perhaps one of his greatest passions, and here he is, turning away from it. She’s so used to perfect, open disclosure between them that it takes her some time to work out what he’s hiding from her.
He’s scared.
She’s known him scared before, though he’d hidden it better than she had during the war. But this is a different type of fear.
Lord Voldemort is dead, and he left nothing worthwhile behind. Why should Tom regain his own form? What would he be coming back to? Everything he values in life these days belongs to Ginny. He has little to gain and everything to lose from their separation.
She’d never have thought that she would be the one cajoling Tom Riddle into coming back from the dead rather than the other way around.
It’s not like they’d really be separating, anyway. They’d only be in different bodies, after all. They’ve been one person for so long, that Ginny can’t—refuses to—ever let Tom go, not if she can help it. Tom is a part of her, an extension of her soul.
Then why does it matter?
Tom and Ginny want different things. They feel different things. They like different things. They can’t really appreciate those differences now, can’t take advantage of them the way they’d be able to if they had separate bodies.
Tom wouldn’t lose the Weasleys—Ginny would make sure to drag him kicking and screaming into the fold.
Tom wouldn’t lose Harry—Ginny would make sure… she’d make sure…
What are you even suggesting? A ménage à trois?
That doesn’t sound terrible, exactly, but it also doesn’t sound exactly like what Ginny wants.
Ginny isn’t sure what she wants, or what Tom wants, or what they both want. That’s the point. That’s the problem.
I suppose we can at least look into it.
Ginny knows he’s pandering to her, but she also knows that they need to do this. And she knows that they can do this.
Ginny wasn’t sorted into Slytherin, but Tom was, and he’s taught her how to be cunning and ambitious enough to see the impossible come to life.
Tom wasn’t sorted into Gryffindor, but Ginny was, and Ginny knows that she’s taught him how to be brave enough to face this change.
Between the two of them, they can do anything.
end
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Ginny & Tom, Harry/Ginny, Tomarry
Rating: M
Chapter Word Count: 1,147
Chapter Count: 7 / 7 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6
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.
Ginny makes the team. Tom makes friends.
It should have been impossible, to see their wildly different dreams through, as though one body could exist in two places at once. And yet, they were managing. Ginny goes to practice, moves up in the ranks, plays as a replacement player, moves up in the ranks, plays on the first string. And after she drags her bruised and exhausted body home, Tom spends the evenings pouring over legal documentation, sending letters, and spending time with carefully selected people with carefully selected connections to witches and wizards with political sway.
Tom makes considerable headway placing foundations for some of his farther-reaching goals, but perhaps his greatest behind the scenes success to date was when he said to Hermione over casual drinks, “Is it true that you didn’t know how to write with a quill before coming to Hogwarts? Wow! You’d think there’d be a class for that or something!”
All he had to do then was lean back and watch Hermione single-handedly move mountains.
“What are you doing here?” asks Harry, his eyebrows raised. He looks around the ministry atrium as though expecting dark wizards to spring up from behind the worn Health and Safety posters decorating the walls.
Ginny frowns at him, mock severely. “What’s this? Can’t a witch pick her wizard up from work and spirit him off to a romantic date?”
Harry quirks a grin. “That depends. Is the witch paying? She’s the famous Quidditch player. I’m just a lowly ministry employee.”
“I suppose I could be persuaded to cover the tab,” says Tom, and Ginny’s eyes fall to half mast. “But I might expect to walk you home if I do.”
Harry snorts a laugh and follow’s Ginny out of the ministry. “You’ve been ‘walking me home’ after nearly every date we’ve been on, so I suppose that might be a reasonable enough expectation,” Harry answers dryly. Despite his seeming nonchalance, his cheeks are slightly flushed, and Tom is so smug about it that Ginny almost rolls her eyes.
I wonder how he’d react to a bouquet.
Ginny flashes Harry a grin to cover up the sudden wistfulness that washes over her.
“Next time, I’ll bring you flowers,” she promises, feeling strange.
“That’s fine,” says Harry breezily. “I’m rather fond of peonies, just so you know.”
Tom huffs out a delighted laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Dating Harry is amazing.
Or at least, it’s usually amazing.
It’s sometimes amazing.
It’s always amazing. What are you complaining over? Haven’t you been in love with him for nearly half your life? You have. It was your crush that made me think of him this way in the first place, back when I couldn’t tell your feelings from mine, and it was your crush that gave me a context for my own emotions when I finally started to become aware of myself again.
Ginny is in love with Harry. Tom is in love with Harry. One or both of them is in love with Harry.
What’s the difference?
Ginny is Ginny, and Tom is Tom, but there’s only one body between them. And so, no matter where the emotions come from, there’s only one heart to race, only one stomach to twist, only ten toes to curl. What’s felt by one of them is felt by both of them. So does it matter where the emotions come from?
It didn’t used to, really. But as months pass, and years pass, Ginny starts to think that maybe it does.
Ginny has grown used to Tom always being a part of her, but she starts to wonder whether or not it has to be this way. Could they build a body for Tom? Grant him full autonomy? Is that even possible?
Unlikely. At least, not with the sort of spells you’d be willing to use.
That’s not fair, though. Ginny had agreed to learning and casting illegal dark spells during the war, and Ginny has been researching dark magic with Tom since they left school. Ginny isn’t an innocent little girl anymore. She knows what good and evil are, and she’s confident in her ability to work out which is which.
These spells would be darker. Much darker. You balked at the idea of the Killing Curse. Are you prepared to indulge in human sacrifices?
They could find other spells, surely, or invent new ones.
Perhaps.
It isn’t like Tom to not jump on the idea of spell invention. Pushing the boundaries of magic and knowledge is perhaps one of his greatest passions, and here he is, turning away from it. She’s so used to perfect, open disclosure between them that it takes her some time to work out what he’s hiding from her.
He’s scared.
She’s known him scared before, though he’d hidden it better than she had during the war. But this is a different type of fear.
Lord Voldemort is dead, and he left nothing worthwhile behind. Why should Tom regain his own form? What would he be coming back to? Everything he values in life these days belongs to Ginny. He has little to gain and everything to lose from their separation.
She’d never have thought that she would be the one cajoling Tom Riddle into coming back from the dead rather than the other way around.
It’s not like they’d really be separating, anyway. They’d only be in different bodies, after all. They’ve been one person for so long, that Ginny can’t—refuses to—ever let Tom go, not if she can help it. Tom is a part of her, an extension of her soul.
Then why does it matter?
Tom and Ginny want different things. They feel different things. They like different things. They can’t really appreciate those differences now, can’t take advantage of them the way they’d be able to if they had separate bodies.
Tom wouldn’t lose the Weasleys—Ginny would make sure to drag him kicking and screaming into the fold.
Tom wouldn’t lose Harry—Ginny would make sure… she’d make sure…
What are you even suggesting? A ménage à trois?
That doesn’t sound terrible, exactly, but it also doesn’t sound exactly like what Ginny wants.
Ginny isn’t sure what she wants, or what Tom wants, or what they both want. That’s the point. That’s the problem.
I suppose we can at least look into it.
Ginny knows he’s pandering to her, but she also knows that they need to do this. And she knows that they can do this.
Ginny wasn’t sorted into Slytherin, but Tom was, and he’s taught her how to be cunning and ambitious enough to see the impossible come to life.
Tom wasn’t sorted into Gryffindor, but Ginny was, and Ginny knows that she’s taught him how to be brave enough to face this change.
Between the two of them, they can do anything.
end