Current mood:	working
Current music:	Sheryl Crow, "Soak Up the Sun"
Entry tags:	fics

My ficlet for mctabby's Blame Somebody Else Day challenge
In which we commit an act of writing we'd never normally commit, and blame somebody else.

Thanks to faith_accompli for the encouragement and the cigarettes.

Incarnate*
Tom/Ginny, 691 words

Of course there was a second copy. I can't believe no one thought of that. Did they really think, assuming they believed what Harry told them about Tom hiding himself in a diary, that Tom would never have thought to make another in case something happened to the first one? It was easier to make after the first, he told me, just a little spell repetition. The hardest part was finding another book. That first one had been absolutely perfect, but he hadn't thought to buy two of them. For seven years I've resisted retrieving the second copy. I know the password to the hidden closet and where to tap the bricks with my wand. I know that the second copy can only be opened with a spell said just the right way. I know that since that incident first year, no one's trusted me with a secret, which I think is stupid since I kept my secrets better than anyone else that year.

I know a lot of things, but I'm not so sure what to believe.

Down. Left. Right. Up. Geos dissendium. Down. Right. Up. A second spell in the only Parseltongue I remember. The bricks melt away, and I look over my shoulder to see if anyone's coming down the hall, wishing I thought to tie my hair back from my face. I look into the alcove, and there it is. Nearly identical to the first one, with a cover so green it's almost black, and the monogram T.M.R. stamped in silver on the front. Slytherins. Self-indulgent to the core. As I reach for the book, I listen for footsteps in the hall, but it seems like even that cat of Filch's is somewhere else for the night. The leather cover is soft in my hands, and the pages look as though they're glued together. I'll wait to open it.

A charm and a tap on the diary's cover, and it opens, flipping to a page in the middle. Blank, of course, and right in that perfect spot where the binding breaks on a book to lie open in the center. Nothing but my best quill for this, and the ink, green.

Hello, Tom.

Ginny, my love. I thought you'd never find this.

I'm not your love.

So bitter. Why?

You know why. You left me all alone. You don't know how many years I've put up with people staring at me because of what you did to me, and how Mother almost didn't let me return to Hogwarts the next year. Percy, too. He wouldn't leave me alone all summer.

If you're so upset with me, why did you retrieve this diary?

I had to think about that one. He knew the answer. It was inside him. He'd taken it from me all those years ago. All those years. It wasn't that many, but it feels like it. </i>

Ink. Because-
Because I had to, Tom.

That year, he told me he loved me. For real, not just calling me his love, his sweetheart. I don't know what he was trying to achieve, if anything, by calling me that, but I have learned my lesson. I put the diary away regularly, and would sometimes go for a week or more without writing in it. It drove us both crazy, I'm sure, but I think it protected me. Instead of him taking everything I put in, I was able to give a little, then build back to where I was, both of us becoming stronger as the year progressed. Like building a tolerance. By April, he was able to take full human form. I'd forgotten those eyes, how much they held. Tom wasn't my first kiss, but he was my best, his mouth surprisingly warm and his hands going only and exactly where they should.

He made promises. He taught me the Unforgivable curses. He asked me about Harry and how a baby could bring down the most powerful wizard in the world. I answered his questions and made plans for my future. Ginny Weasley Riddle. Ginny Weasley Marvolo Riddle. Ginny Marvolo Riddle. He waits.

And I wonder.
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*characters, places, etc., belong to J.K. Rowling. Tom/Ginny is blamed on mctabby...though it really wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. Finished with 25 minutes to go on Sunday, April 13, 2003.