It�s a hot summer day at the Burrow, and Ginny Weasley sits out in the garden in the faded yellow sundress that is slightly too small for her this year and the white sun-hat her mother has crammed onto her head over her pigtail, and watches her older brothers. They are having fun, she thinks, de-gnoming her mother�s vegetable patch with their sleeves rolled up and their hair slicked back to their heads by sweat. Ron is loud with complaint at Fred and George, who have come from their shop in Hogsmeade at their mother�s insistence, and who have been purposefully flinging half their gnomes his way. Charlie is standing laughing at them, flushed with sun and still looking slightly burnt around the edges even after two weeks at home.
Ginny sucks the end of her quill thoughtfully. She still keeps a diary, though the book she writes in now is neither black nor leatherbound, and there is no one to write back. She doesn�t write secrets, though. Ginny had purged herself of secrets as a frightened eleven-year-old, given up her soul�s keeping to another. Her secrets now are not the kind that can be told, and she has never thought about writing them down. Secrets define her, she thinks. They are her past, and her present, and they will undoubtedly be her future.
Instead, she draws. Doodles, stick figures, patterns of twining vines that curl around the corners of her pages. Lopsided pictures of her family and friends; Ginny knows that she isn�t much of an artist but it doesn�t bother her, she draws anyway. Sometimes she thinks that the words have been burned out of her, drained out of her along with the life in her veins and the ink from her page there in the serpent�s lair.
Across the garden, George shouts in fury as an agile gnome sinks its teeth into his hand, and flings the culprit wildly over the garden wall. Ron is laughing at his brother�s childish pout, face free and open and guileless. Ginny blinks slowly, watches his eyes pass across her, linger on her legs beneath the too-short dress. She moves them, rearranges them beneath herself and sees Ron recollect himself with a tiny start and go back to his gnome-flinging. He is not as good at keeping secrets as she is, but no one, looking at his open honest face, would ever think that he could have anything to conceal. It is an advantage.
She doesn�t quite know when it began, when she decided to start this whole twisting web of lies and sex and secrets. Sometimes, when he shows his Gryffindor side again and stays away from her for days on end, refusing the commands she sends hidden in looks and glances and tiny gestures, she wonders why she picked Ron, when she has so many other brothers to choose from. But Bill and Charlie are too old, too far removed and barely seen, Percy is Percy, and Fred and George are too wrapped up in their own little twin world, which Ginny sometimes wonders about. And anyway, they don�t have that same shining innocence that Ron exudes from his every pore. Taking that away � well, it�s part of the game Ginny plays. She will strip his illusions from him one by one, shatter his innocence, hold his soul in the palm of her hand. He may turn away from her, but he always turns back again.
Tom would be so proud of her, Ginny thinks, absently scrawling T M R in thick slashes across the page. So proud. He taught her everything she knows about this game she plays, and she has learnt it well.
Blackmail. Manipulation. Rape. Words Ginny learned from books, branded onto her soul by Tom Riddle before her twelfth birthday. Simple names for the rocks over which she was broken and reshaped.
Tom had loved her. Ginny knew this. Tom had loved her when she was still a whining crying child, worshipping the ground that Harry Potter walked on and too blind to see that his intensity was reserved always and forever for another. Tom had had his own intensity, though, a fire that he had shared with Ginny. She had learned pain under his hands, learned pleasure and hatred and desire. Learned to crave him and what he could do to her.
In the back of her mind, of course, Ginny knows that nothing she can do will bring Tom Riddle back; Harry has destroyed the diary that held his memory, prevented him from draining away her life (which Ginny would gladly and willingly have given), to all intents and purposes saved her. For a few mad weeks in her fourth year when the longing overcame her too strongly she considered Voldemort, but she has heard Harry�s story of the Dark Lord�s rebirth, and the creature he describes is not her Tom. Evil has overcome whatever humanity he has left, and he is a monstrous thing.
What else is left for her? Ginny craves too much and too badly to be satisfied with a normal life and a normal boyfriend, craves more of what Tom gave her. She has tried, sometimes, locked in silent secrecy with the Slytherin boys, but they are crude and rough and thoughtless and not Tom. Ginny wants him back, her cruel, refined possessor, wants his touch on her skin and his voice in her ear.
Pulling her legs under her, she rises smoothly to her feet. Ginny knows that her dress is really too short for decency, but this is the Burrow, and she is fifteen, and they are her brothers. It�s a strange, silly kind of irony, she supposes, that she has chosen to push her little experiments on Ron, when it was he who �rescued� her from Tom in the Chamber. And Harry, of course, but Harry cannot be trapped by Ginny�s little manipulations; Harry has his own affairs, and secrets, and secret affairs. Ron still doesn�t know where Harry goes when he vanishes from Gryffindor Tower at nights. Perhaps, one day, Ginny will tell him. Perhaps she will save it for the final moments, so that she can watch the knowledge shatter him.
Ginny doesn�t look back as she saunters away around the side of the house. She can feel the heat on the back of her neck that means Ron is watching her as she heads towards the orchard and the spinney behind the meadow. Sometimes, she wonders why he plays along even as much as he does. But then, he is not Tom, he is only a boy, he doesn�t have Tom�s control. She doesn�t try to analyse her reasons, but perhaps revenge comes into it a bit � perhaps she is giving back a little bit of what they failed to save her from, when they were all too busy with their friends and their books and their Quidditch to notice that Tom Riddle had taken hold of her.
No blame attaches to Harry. Ginny knows this; sometimes she wonders if she still retains the twisted echoes of her child�s crush on him. Nor could Hermione be expected to have seen the differences in her that year, when Ginny had never even met the girl before. Ron, though � they had been close as children, only a year apart in age, had spent ten years together. Ron should have known. Should have seen that something had happened to Ginny, to the sweet, outgoing little sister he had loved. The child she had been is gone forever now.
Circling the spinney, Ginny comes to the overgrown tangles of what was once a shrubbery. Checking around her out of the habit of years, she ducks beneath an overhanging branch and slips into a tiny space between two bushes. This is one of her secrets, one that she shares with Ron. They found this place as giggling children still playing with teddy bears and dolls, and it quickly became their own private hideaway. None of their other siblings, or indeed their parents, had ever found it.
A narrow passageway is revealed, winding between overgrown foliage so that it seems a dim green tunnel. Ginny drops to her knees, crawling along and feeling the crackle and crunch of dead leaves and twigs beneath her hands and knees. Now that she is older, grown taller, leaves and branches catch in her hair, poke at her shoulders beneath the flimsy dress. Her destination is a place where the ground becomes sandy on the way down to the brook, where the tunnel opens out into a dense-walled, brushy cavern just tall enough to stand in. Along the far side, a tiny offshoot of the stream cuts a deep channel through the soft soil, disappearing back into the thick tangle of shrubbery. Every winter, it overflows its bounds and renders this little nest impossible to use. That hasn�t mattered to Ginny since she started at Hogwarts, of course.
Settling to the sand, Ginny pulls off her hat and starts picking bits of leaf and bark out of her hair. She wonders absently how long Ron will be, whether he will even come at all. Sometimes he evades answering her silent summonings, pleads excuses of being unable to get away, busy with chores set by their mother. It never grants him a reprieve. Ginny � well, she will take him eventually. Soon enough he will give up his soul to her keeping, and she will look him in the eye and tell him exactly how little it means. Break him the way she was broken, take a piece of him to fill the gaps in herself.
Vividly, Ginny remembers the aftermath of Harry�s destruction of Tom Riddle. Her parents� faces, concerned and tearful, Madam Pomfrey�s fussing over her, Dumbledore�s calm, twinkling smile. The Headmaster�s voice, telling her that it would all be well, that she should try to forget about everything that had happened. As if she ever could.
She remembers the panic she had felt, confronted with her teachers, the certainty that they knew the truth of what Tom had done to and with her, that they would condemn her, expel her, outcast her from her family. Ginny remembers wondering how she was supposed to forget Tom, forget his hands on her body, his touch in her mind. Hot chocolate and bed rest could not exorcise those memories, couldn�t banish the aching desire that consumed her. More than once in the years since, Ginny has wondered where the Sorting Hat would place her now � Gryffindor, for bravery and family pride, or Slytherin, for the ghost of Tom Riddle that walks beside her? What is her truth? She doesn�t know.
Sometimes, Ginny thinks she can almost recall what it was to be innocent, before Tom. Before she ever opened those yellowed pages, wrote out her soul for the Dark Lord�s echoes to consume. She remembers the slow slide down into darkness and obsession, the flutterings of fear in her stomach after she woke up blood-stained and remembering only shadows. Remembers the first time, months before her twelfth birthday, when she woke in darkness and tears, lips bruised and bitten, pain sharp and vivid in her mind. Remembers reaching a trembling hand between her legs, feeling no surprise when her fingers came back bloody and wet with his seed. Remembers the way he taught her to crave it, to want the pain and violation and yearn for the pleasure he could give her, more gasping awakenings in dormitory darkness. Were they dreams? Echoes of memory, or reality? She has never known. They felt real.
Ginny rises to sit on her heels, kicking off her sandals. She feels a wet shift in her crotch; the memories of Tom always have the power to arouse her. Sliding her knickers down her thighs, she wonders if Ron will come soon, or if she will be forced to resort to her own fingers to ease the growing need. She hopes not; touching herself is pleasurable, but this has never been about pleasure. It has been almost a week since Ron last acceded to her silent demands.
Muttered oaths from the hedge-tunnel, and Ginny lets herself relax a little, parting her knees, knowing that the shortness of her skirt makes her practically indecent. Before long a red head enters the cave, followed by her youngest brother�s lanky body. He gets to his feet, brushing debris from his hands and knees, and Ginny sees his eyes widen as he looks at her, sees the tightening in the crotch of his jeans as he reacts. Slowly, deliberately, without breaking eye contact, she begins undoing the buttons down the front of her dress.
When she reaches her stomach, she pulls her wand from her pocket and points it at the shrubbery wall, whispering the familiar incantation. Silence wraps around them like a glove, a warding to distract the eye and repel the curious. The motion causes the blouse of her dress to gape open, baring the soft swell of her breasts, an unbroken line of freckled flesh from her throat to her bellybutton. Ginny looks up at Ron, standing there with his jaw clenched and his erection straining at his jeans, and wonders if more extreme provocation will be necessary today. Smiling slightly, she slips the last few buttons out of their holes and shrugs the dress back off her shoulders.
It is enough; he is on her in an instant, mouth hard and hot on hers and hands fumbling at his clothing. Ginny is borne back to the ground by his weight on her; she laughs breathlessly and he pulls at her pigtail, yanking her face up and plunging his tongue into her mouth. The old excitement shivers along her bones, and Ginny imagines that she can feel Tom watching her, imagines the smile on his face. Ron groans desperately into her mouth and shoves his confining trousers down to his knees.
Then he is in her, hard and hot and pulsing inside her, deep ragged thrusts on the edge of pain, and he keeps tight hold of her pigtail as he fucks her, other hand clutching at her hip. Her head is pulled tight back, the bones of her neck crunching as he grinds his mouth against hers and plunges into her again, and she bucks weakly beneath him, the force of it ripping through her and as her orgasm tips her into oblivion she can hear Tom laughing.
When Ginny comes back to herself, Ron is collapsed atop her, body jerking and shuddering as he spurts and pulses within her. He is heavy, squashing her into the sandy ground, but she doesn�t consider pushing him off her. Ginny lies beneath him, content to wait, until his breathing slows and he drags himself off her, t-shirt soaked with sweat and rasping deliciously across her tingling skin.
�God.� He looks down at her, and for a delighted instant, Ginny thinks he may be about to cry. She follows his gaze, glancing down her body at the creases left by his clothing, the finger-shaped bruises on her hip, and reminds herself to heal them magically before they leave. She would like to retain the marks, something to remind her, but she knows there is no sense in inviting discovery, however small the chance. Ron stares at her body, face flushed with agonised guilt. �God, Gin, I�m sorry. I�m so sorry.� Ginny laughs at him, reaches over to pull off his t-shirt. Ron flinches away from her touch, but she grasps the hem of the material anyway, and yanks it over his head.
�No, Gin,� he protest weakly as she climbs into his lap, straddling him and rubbing her wet cunt against his cock. His chest is firm and sweaty, and Ginny can feel her nipples hardening. His mouth firms even as his cock twitches against her, and he pushes her away, an angry, determined look on his face. Inwardly she smiles. �Gin, no. We�ve got to get back, it�ll be dinner soon.�
Ginny lets herself be pushed away. �Oh, now you don�t want me?� Her voice needles him, stabs him with the knowledge of what they have done and are doing. �Don�t want to fuck me, Ron?� She circles one fingernail around her nipple, licks her lips slowly. �Maybe you should have thought of that before, brother. Would you like me to suck you? Is that what you want?� He is frozen, and she bends forward and laps wetly at his stirring flesh, tasting herself ingrained in his skin. He stiffens with a moan, and she wraps her open mouth around him, flicking at the head with her tongue and tasting salty fluid. Laughter bubbles giddily up within her.
Ron gasps and bucks beneath her mouth, muscles clenching, and suddenly grabs her shoulders and thrust her away from him. �No, Gin!� Ginny can see that he is furious now, and it sends shivers of delight through her. She pouts deliberately, settling back on her heels and reaching down between her legs.
�Well, if you won�t play with me, I�ll just have to do it myself.� He knows, and she knows that he knows, that it is her spell that has secured them here; he cannot leave until she cancels it. His jaw tightens as he stares at her, and Ginny works her fingers teasingly over her own body, arching with a coy gasp that finally pushes Ron too far. He backhands her across the face, skin flushed with fury and storms in his blue eyes, and she falls back to the ground, laughing despite the pain.
�Slut!� he pants, forcing her arms above her head; Ginny�s muscles twinge in protest, but she opens her legs, welcoming him. �Fucking whore!� He is brutal with her, the edge taken off his need by their earlier joining, thrusting violently and leaving bloody bite-marks on her neck and shoulders, her wrist bones grinding together in his fist. Pain and pleasure mingle, and Ginny remembers the first time, relishes how far she has brought him.
It had been the Easter holidays at Hogwarts, and Ginny had laid her plans carefully, baited her trap and sprung it with Slytherin-like care. A few stolen ingredients from the Potions laboratory, a spell learned on an illicit excursion to the Restricted Section, and she had been ready. After he had woken from the haze of dream and lust she had drugged him into, Ron had been torn between fury and guilt; he had brooded alone for the rest of the holiday. Ginny had been grateful that Hermione was spending the break at home, Harry too occupied with his own little Slytherin secrets to pay much attention. One night, after she had heard Harry sneak off down the stairs under his Invisibility Cloak, she had insinuated herself back into Ron�s bed, whispered threats and promises and goaded him into taking her again. After that, it had been easy.
Ron never even notices when she comes for the second time; he is too wrapped up in his own body�s sensations, one hand hard against her throat as she arches and shudders beneath him. Her spasms push him over the edge too; he comes with a furious yell, eyes burning blue fire into hers, and Ginny exalts in her triumph over him as he collapses bonelessly against her. He is hers. Body and soul, he belongs to her now, he will never be free of her. She can do what she will with him, break and shatter him however she wishes. And she knows it will be soon now.
Ginny crawls out from beneath the sobbing sprawl that is her brother. Weeks ago, she might have held him afterwards, comforted his tears away, but not any more. Staggering to her feet, she picks up her wand and casts the self-healing spell, feeling her aches and bruises vanish. She tosses her head back, climbing back into her clothing and re-plaiting her hair, then whispers the incantation to lower the wards. Ron is still prone and sweating on the ground; she leaves him there without a backward glance, making her way out of their hideaway and back towards the Burrow.
Hugging her arms around herself as she walks, Ginny realises that clouds have come up, veiling the sun and turning the afternoon chill. She imagines the cold as Tom�s fingers on her skin, making her shiver. He would be pleased with her, she thinks. He would be proud.
Back in the garden, her diary is still where she left it beneath the tree, and her brothers are lounging about on the grass trading dirty stories. They fall silent as she seats herself among the tree-roots, exchanging guilty glances. They will not discuss such things in front of her; Ginny is their sister, their youngest sibling, an innocent. Instead they strike up a conversation about Quidditch and the Chudley Cannons� chances in the League. Ginny opens her diary and begins to draw, sketching over and over the image of a heart, shattered into glass-like shards. And in the centre of every page, like a mantra or a prayer, those three initials. T. M. R.
Everybody always assumes that Ginny Weasley is as innocent as her name suggests. Sometimes, she even finds it funny.
Sometimes.