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Perchance To Scream | ||||
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Category: Post-DH/PM Characters:Harry/Ginny Genres: General Warnings: Mental Abuse, Mild Language Story is Complete Rating: G Reviews: 2 Summary: How Ginny finally defeated Tom Riddle. Short birthday fic for Ginny! Hitcount: Story Total: 1202 Disclaimer: Harry Potter Publishing Rights ? J.K.R. Note the opinions in this story are my own and in no way represent the owners of this site. This story subject to copyright law under transformative use. No compensation is made for this work. Author's Notes: How did Ginny's professional career change after the events in Twenty-Five Years Later? This is one of the ways. |
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He was always there for her. Burrowed deep down in her subconscious like a malevolent mental tapeworm, lurking, hiding, waiting to make his presence known on the worst possible of occasions. Ginny had learned, over the years, how to lock him away; but she was so very, very young. Besides, how can you stop yourself from thinking? To think about stopping him was to think about him. When she had joined the Gryffindor Quidditch Team, he had whispered in her ear, loud and clear in his distinctive sixteen-year-old voice she recognised oh so well, Let’s see if you manage to kill anyone in a broom accident and Ginny felt once again the sickening horror as she realised she had set Salazar Slytherin’s Beast free and she’d had to concentrate so much just to force herself to fly straight, she’d dropped half the Quaffles in training and he’d settled back and chuckled. When she blossomed under Angelina Johnson’s cheerfully matter-of-fact tutelage and helped Gryffindor win the Cup that first year, he’d waited until after she’d tumbled into bed deliriously happy and stuffed with Butterbeer and Cheese Puffskeins and Fizzing Whizzbees from the party. Ginny woke up gasping and drenched with sweat, after what seemed like hours of watching helplessly and weeping as the revived Basilisk got into the common-room during the party and hunted down her friends and brothers one by one as they ran shrieking into their dorms. Little wonder that Ginny threw herself into life, filling her days and nights with activity so she wouldn’t have to think. Little wonder that she made Defence Against The Dark Arts her top subject, practised jinxes with her long-suffering dorm-mates until she could beat every one of them, and read every book she could find in the Hogwarts library on Possession. She joined the Gobstones Club, the Hogwarts choir, she went on dates with boys and nature walks with Hagrid, and even sweet-talked Madam Hooch into letting her join the firsties’ Flying classes for the extra broom time. Because when she was busying herself so much she could fall into bed pleasantly exhausted every night, she could drown him out. But he got through anyway. He whispered in her ear every night that terrible sixth year at Hogwarts. I’m winning. Hogwarts is mine. You’re all mine. You especially, my sweet Ginny. I’ll make you mine once again. And night after night he showed her in her dreams what he would do with her - forcing her to march through the castle behind the Carrows, torturing young boys and girls, duelling her friends, murdering her own family. Nearly every morning that year Ginny woke up and cried furiously and silently into her blankets, jealous of her reputation in the dorm as an unflinching, unweeping stoic. Even after the war was over, and he was most certainly dead, the ghost of him reared up and struck in her most unguarded moments. The first night she’d slept over at Grimmauld Place with Harry, she’d kicked Harry awake with her tossing and turning; that was when he’d found out about the nightmares. While training with the Holyhead Harpies he shouted over the whistling wind They’re dropping you from the team! and she nearly crashed. He struck hard during her first pregnancy, whispering You’ll be a terrible mother so incessantly she was reduced to tears in Waterstones; not knowing the real cause, Hermione blamed herself for loading Ginny up with parenting books. When the Healer put James in her arms, tiny and pink and wrinkled, he sent her a devastating image of her small eleven-year-old hands stained scarlet with rooster blood, and said I’ll take this James as well, you’ll do it for me and she spent months afterwards terrified that she would drop him. But even this last lingering shred of Tom Riddle faded with time. And love. When Ginny got her first Player Of The Match award, after a hard-fought five-hour battle against Puddlemere United, she’d whispered “Take that, you twisted little snake-tongued twat” and that night, she slept long and hard and deep, and woke up pleasantly rested. There were a thousand places to go and millions of things to do, see, hear, smell, touch and taste, and whenever they could get away from their extremely busy jobs Ginny travelled the world with Harry. They basked in the sun on the beaches of Barbados, slipped hand-in-hand through the Sorcerers’ Souk in Suez, and zipped across New Zealand’s amazing mountains and valleys on their Firebolts… and all the while he stayed silent. Sometimes Ginny imagined him watching from some hole in the ground, like an impotently raging animal too scared to come out into the sun, and she’d allow herself one vengeful smirk, before returning to her life. After she married Harry the nightmares nearly stopped altogether. Night after night Ginny drifted off to sleep with her head pillowed on his chest, or his arm draped fondly over her, and his comforting presence settled her soul like nothing else. He grounded her, cherished her, supported her, made her feel whole and young again, untouched by the cold, scaly, insidious corruption of the Diary. Never cloying, never overprotective, but there for her when she needed him most, ready with love, understanding, and an endless fund of wry wit. Ginny had helped Harry defeat Voldemort; in turn, he helped her defeat Tom Riddle. Harry was there for her as she fought for her place with the Holyhead Harpies, and through the hectic never-ending roller-coaster that was birthing and raising the three rascals they’d found themselves parenting. He’d been there for her when she quit the Harpies and Quidditch once and for all. And he was there the night she won Feature Of The Year at Snitch! Magazine’s Annual Gala for her massive piece on the history of sportsmanship in British and Irish Quidditch. Harry sat at their table and beamed proudly as she went up to collect the little certificate; and beside him was James, looking very grown-up in his best dress robes, and Albus every inch as tall as his brother and taking a million photographs and grinning ear to ear, and her Lily-Lu completely forgetting her personal vow to be a ladylike and dignified sixteen-year-old, practically jumping up and down hooting and cheering her beloved Mum. Ginny saw all this as she accepted the award, and couldn’t stop herself from laughing from sheer joy. And she did not think of Tom Riddle at all. She didn’t know it, but she beat him at last then. She didn’t realise it, not consciously, because to think about beating him was to think about him. And thus did Ginny destroy the last vestiges of Tom Riddle within her. Later that night, Ginny reminded her children to go to sleep, knowing very well that they would probably stay up another hour talking excitedly about the events of the evening, then went to change out of her evening gown, wash off the makeup, and get ready for bed. She got under the covers, kissed Harry good night, and grinned to herself as he slipped his arm around her and fell asleep immediately. Ginny settled herself snugly under the bedclothes by Harry’s side, his body a reassuring bulwark against which a weary warrior could rest and trust to keep her safe. And slept in untroubled, victorious peace. |
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