Vera
He always imagined him still sitting in Ginny's brain, a curled snake basking in the warmth of her hyperactive imagination. Late at night when even the moon had drifted away, he would gnaw on the image filled with secret anxieties.
Oh, why, why was it that the hands that reached out from the dead were not the tender caresses of father and mother long lost, but those of the enemy still lingering in the shadowlands?
And why in that insidious, trustworthy shape? Voldemort with his ruby red eyes, late night TV movie body was the picture of reptilian evil. But his younger self...
The boy Tom Riddle was the smug young garden snake that he'd whispered to last week while Sprout meandered on. Whipcord thin, dark eyes sparkling with intelligence and a casual violence that sparked some recognition in Harry.
Voldemort was unthinkably evil in the same way the legends painted stepmothers and witches. A matte darkness that absorbed all light.
Riddle was obsidian and so well polished that when Harry had peered into him, he had seen himself staring back.
He dated Ginny for a long while.
He didn't like to think about what that meant.
Even though when he kissed her, he was thinking of that young garden snake trailing through her thoughts and flickering his tongue to the back of her eyes. Peering out at him.
Normal people didn't have thoughts like this. None of his friends would understand these serpentine themes that underpinned every part of his life. Not even Snape, who was not a friend, but a companion in darkness, could comprehend how much of it Harry had swallowed to make himself strong.
When he was a teenager, he'd had the same nocturnal emissions of any boy his age. His palms would sweat and his dreams would be fevered tangles of breasts and damp hair. Time had changed him, deaths had warped him and the murder of Lord Voldemort at his hands had cracked what was left.
The occasional wet dream was provoked by soft hissing sounds.
The thin line of sanity that tethered him to all that was sweet was slowly shredding. It seemed to him where once only pitiless evil had lurked, flickers of truth could be found. What separated him from the boy in the journal? Only years and dust.
The seductive curl of handwriting on the page would be his one day, a loop indefinite. What secrets would he spill to the inquisitive quill? Would these late night worries be the worst of his sins? Or as was rapidly becoming apparent, would the curl of a B stand for the blood he would spill?
"Harry! Come on, mate. We're going to be late for class." Ron shook him, a flash of teeth and sleep mashed hair.
He roused himself and shook his head. Just maudlin night thoughts that would fade in daylight. Even heroes needed moments to wallow in self-pity and depression.
"Me? At least I won't take an hour in the shower!"
"Oi! It was only the once..."
And off they went into another sunny, beautiful day.
)*(
At breakfast, Ginny settled with her girlfriends and chattered amiably about the day ahead, the porridge she was over sweetening and the new bracelet Madge's mother had sent her. Her surface thoughts matched the conversation, except for a few brief worries about her upcoming potions' exam.
And farther down, where she kept her private thoughts, she worried that her breasts were too small and that's why Harry had ditched her. She hoped her mother and father were all right as their usual owl was late.
Deeper even still, in the dark pit of dreams, there was a discreet hiss and the damp tip of the tongue. It dreamed of sinking teeth into the soft flesh of a certain boy. Dreamed of this and nothing else. Only occasionally, it would dare to rise to the surface and glare out with the her eyes.
One day. It would swallow him whole.
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