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KISSED AND SCARRED
Tell me about Harry Potter, he'd said, and Ginny told him. Tales and tales and tales of brilliant
Harry Potter, brave Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived and Triumphed and Defeated
You-Know-Who.
Who? Tom had replied, having no patience for games of that sort,
and finally Ginny replied in her trembling hand, Lord Voldemort. Harry
Potter defeated Lord Voldemort, and Tom felt a peculiar little thrill of
excitement and fear at those words written on the page.
The first emotion was simple and easily explained, if a bit beneath him. Even
as he is now, still sixteen and sixteen forever, a mere apparition in the hands
of a girl child so stupid that she actually takes his transparent sympathetic
lies as truth, he knows that he has a great destiny ahead of him. His future is
yet to come, but it has also already happened-—Ginny has told him all of this.
It will never happen to him, trapped in his pages and his memories, but it has
happened to some other Tom Riddle, a Tom who lived longer than that one year. A
Tom who is no longer Tom, but Voldemort. It’s exciting to know that his belief
in his destiny is justified; his destiny is indeed great. It’s childish because
he shouldn’t need stupid little Ginny to tell him these things; he should
believe in himself intrinsically.
The second emotion is…more difficult. It makes Tom question things, things that
should be unquestionable and set in stone, because its his destiny. Who
could defeat Lord Voldemort, Tom’s most brilliant and true creation? Lord
Voldemort is what he promises himself at night, what he traces on his skin with
the tip of his wand in glowing letters when everything at Hogwarts makes that
same skin crawl. And somehow, some way, this boy fifty years into Tom’s future
has destroyed all that, or at least temporarily paused it.
Deep inside, Tom knows that he and Lord Voldemort have separated. Voldemort is
a future that Tom will never realize, because he has already been
realized—-he has gone on in time, in reality, while Tom’s reality is only as
large as the inside of a book. He knows now that it was stupid and thoughtless
of him to enchant his diary and preserve himself in it—no wonder Lord Voldemort
has left him behind. But he hadn’t known! He hadn’t known that he would
trap himself here, that his sixteen-year-old self would live these 365 days
over and over again with no variation, while his self outside the diary would
go on and on.
Everything was the same. He lived every day of that year, over and over again,
and nothing ever changed, until one day he woke to find his diary blank. And
then the day after that, Ginny started writing to him, and he was so bloody grateful,
grateful that something could change, that he began writing back.
And then there was Harry. Harry, Harry, Harry—he consumed Ginny’s mind, owned
her heart utterly. Even better, she gave him her heart utterly, without his
even asking for it, a mastery so pure that Tom marveled at it. It was so bloody
easy. Ginny belonged to Harry Potter completely, and he didn’t even want her.
Beautiful.
Soon Tom realized that he owned Ginny too, if not in heart than in soul.
She poured it out to him, all of it, her secrets and her fears and every little
bit of herself, all of it, and he swallowed it all like candy and grew strong.
So strong, in fact, that his world became exactly what it was, a memory, and
Ginny’s world became reality to him. Sometimes he even thought that he could
cut himself and bleed red, instead of the ink-black he had unwittingly confined
himself to. He was able to make his own life, live only the days that he wanted
to, over and over, instead of the whole bloody year, and soon, he could live
Ginny’s days.
That was wonderful—-really living again, instead of merely existing as a
memory. He could be made of flesh and blood. Ginny’s flesh and blood, it
was true, but the living in flesh and blood of an eleven-year-old girl was
preferable to being a sixteen-year-old boy of ink and paper. He twisted the
little necks of the roosters and loved that he could change things. He
could make the world different, the real world.
Almost as amusing was Ginny’s tragic panic at her lost hours, her loss of
control over her own body—Tom, why don’t I remember anything from four to five
this afternoon? Tom, it as if my body isn’t my own anymore. And it wasn’t,
because it was Tom’s body now.
One night he even borrowed Ginny’s body (his body, now) to look at Harry
Potter. To find this boy, this mere child who will (had) defeat(ed) him
in the future (past). It didn’t take long—it seemed as though something had led
him directly to Harry’s bed, either Ginny’s memories or some inexplicable call,
metal to magnet.
The result was surprising. Tom had known, intellectually, that Harry was
practically a child, but until he saw that smooth young face, he had never
really believed it.
Harry was not really beautiful, as Ginny had dreamily claimed so many
times. His face was thin and pale but nice-looking enough, for a child, but his
black hair was in appalling disarray, either because of sleep or merely as its
natural state. Tom only wished he could see the ‘brilliant green eyes’; perhaps
there was something in them that made this boy extraordinary instead of simply
ordinary.
And then, for some reason that escaped him, he’d brushed aside the wild black
hair and seen the scar.
It was strangely…pink, as if it were still fresh. When Tom reached out a hand
to touch it, it was warm and soft beneath his finger.
With that touch of skin-to-skin, Tom felt something shoot through him,
something that Ginny’s young body did not yet quite understand. It filled Tom
with such delicious anger, at himself and at this boy, because he knew, he knew
that if he were in his own body, his cock would be hard.
He couldn’t stop touching it, this scar that he had caused sometime in his
future-past. He traced its lightning bolt shape with his fingertips until he
realized that Harry was awake, and staring at him blindly with swift-blinking
eyes.
He knocked Tom’s hand away and put on a pair of round black glasses; Tom hadn’t
even noticed them on the pillow. His eyes were indeed a brilliant green, and
Tom realized with a pang that the boy was beautiful, not by virtue of his
features but just by something shining inside him. His eyes, maybe, or what was
in them. His soul. “Ginny?”
Tom pulled his hand back to himself; even the streams of red hair in his
peripheral vision hadn’t reminded him that he was still in Ginny’s body. Harry
had held Tom too fascinated to notice anything else, and Tom hated him for
that. Tom hadn’t wanted to believe it, but now he was forced to face it—Harry
held power over him, without even being aware of it, which was somehow worse
than if he’d been doing it intentionally.
Tom leaned forward and kissed the damned boy, kissed that soft pink mouth with
his own soft pink mouth (Ginny’s mouth, his mouth), then pulled back and
bit Harry’s lower lip, hard. When he pulled back he was pleased to see
the glitter of blood on Harry’s mouth, the shocked expression in the boy’s
powerful eyes.
“My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle” he hissed, hating the tinny sound of Ginny’s
voice, “and don’t you ever forget it.”
Harry did forget it, of course. Tom made him forget, with a simple memory
spell, and soon he was back in his book, in his body made of paper and ink, and
Ginny was safe in her bed with Harry’s blood on her lips. She never remembered
a thing.
Tom remembers, though. He remembers the sweet taste of Harry’s mouth, and his innocence,
his surprise and his pain and his power. This is the boy who defeated Lord
Voldemort. This is the boy who Tom has kissed and scarred, whose blood Tom has
tasted.
They could do wonderful things together. After all, if Harry could devour a
girl’s soul unwittingly, what could he do wittingly, willingly, with Tom as a
guide?
Tom is no longer content to be paper and ink. Even Ginny’s body bores him now,
her paper-pale skin, her small girlish curves, her childish attraction to
Harry, which seems so weak now, compared to his own.
He wants a body of his own. He wants to be Tom Riddle in flesh and bone and
blood, not a pale defeated Voldemort, who left behind his youthful self to be
defeated by a child. Tom won’t fare the same fate. He won’t leave his youthful
self behind, and he won’t challenge Harry. He’ll teach him, as he never had
anyone to teach himself. He has the feeling that Harry is very much like him.
Voldemort was his future in his never-ending diary year, but perhaps Tom can
become his own future.
All he needs is Ginny’s body, just one more time—Ginny’s flesh and bone and
blood, given freely to him to form his own. All he needs is Harry’s heart and
soul and mind, to help him along. Harry’s power. Someone else might call it
Harry’s love, but Tom isn’t someone else.
Not anymore.
* * *
You fell down of course
and then you got up of course
and started over
forgot my name of course
then you started to remember
pretty tough to think about
the beginning of december
pretty tough to think about
pretty tough to think about
pretty tough to think about
You're looking down again
and then you look me over
we're laying down again
on a blanket in the clover
the same boy you've always known
well I guess I haven't grown
the same boy you've always known
same boy you've always known
Think of what the past did
it could 've lasted
so put it in your basket
I hope you know a strong man
who can lend you a hand
lowering my casket
I thought this is just today
and soon you'd been returning
the coldest blue ocean water
cannot stop my heart and mind
from burning
everyone who's in the know says
that's exactly how it goes
and if there's anything good about me
I'm the only one who knows
~The Same Boy You've Always Known~ by The White Stripes
END
Written for the HP/White Blood Cells Challenge.
