Chapter Text
When Tom had planned to make a horcrux, there were a lot of things about being a horcrux that never occurred to him. He’d somehow thought that the horcrux would be just a thing, like what was left after trimming his nails. He’d never expected to be trapped, fully aware but helpless, inside the horcrux.
He counted himself fortunate that he’d been dormant, unconscious, for most of the decades since he had made the diary into a trap for himself. Now, however, he was fully awake and horribly frustrated. His only connection to the world was the words of an eleven year old girl. He hoped to gain the use of her senses and her magic, but it was taking longer to insinuate himself into her mind than he had assumed when she had awakened him.
He had to keep reminding himself that he couldn’t afford to frighten her. Her current desires were… tedious. She wanted friendship. She wanted help with her homework. She wanted advice. He tried to offer the temptation of more advanced magic, of tricks she could use against her brothers or against the horrible potions professor she loathed, but she balked at that, pointing out that she’d have to explain how she knew those things.
Which Tom had known might be a problem but had judged wasn’t actually his problem.
There were magics that she wanted to learn, but most of them had to do with enhancing her appearance and charisma, not things Tom had ever bothered with. Artificial advantages of that sort were too easily taken away. Tom could teach her how to flatter, how to discover what mattered to other people, though. That was something that had apparently never occurred to her.
Tom was certain he hadn’t been anywhere near as foolish at eleven. He put aside memories of boasting to Professor Dumbledore and told himself that, while he’d have been fascinated by a book that wrote back to him, that knew things, he’d have guessed that it wanted something from him. Nothing came free.
Even if Ginny Weasley hadn’t realized it yet.
****
Tom wasn’t at all pleased with what Ginny knew about wizarding history between when he’d made the horcrux and when her lifeforce and attention had awakened him. She didn’t know much at all, and what she did know was beyond worrying. The self that had left him behind had gone on to accumulate power, to terrify people, but as far as Tom could tell that other self had had no real plan, no end beyond being feared and killing anyone who opposed him.
That other self had died, but not entirely. Something had happened between Tom’s other self and a small child named Harry Potter. Ginny said that his other self had cast the killing spell, but as far as she knew, there hadn’t been any witnesses but the preverbal child. Tom wasn’t entirely convinced the account could be relied on.
That child, a boy named Harry Potter, was tantalizingly nearby. Like Ginny, he was a Gryffindor, and he was best friends with one of her brothers. Ginny’s crush on Harry who was a year older than she was painfully obvious to anyone who bothered to talk to her.
It was Tom’s good luck that nobody else bothered to talk to the girl. He was able to draw her out about Potter’s everyday doings and about what her brother had said about him. That had led him to the truly disturbing information about his other self. Tom didn’t completely understand Ginny’s account of what her brother had told her about events of the previous year, but the idea of being reduced to a parasite hiding under a turban on the back of some pathetic weakling’s skull appalled him. And drinking unicorn blood? Surely there were less crippling options. He had been thinking that he needed to find that bit of himself and learn what it knew, but he was by no means sure he wanted to take that kind of curse upon himself. For survival, possibly, but not for information.
And he was a little worried that his older, more experienced self might be able to kill or enslave or simply absorb him.
Ginny had never heard of a horcrux, and Tom didn’t want to explain them to her because she might realize what he’d done to put himself into the diary. Without seeking out his other self, he had no way of knowing how many horcruxes there were, where they were, or even what they were. He knew the options he had considered, but consideration didn’t mean having followed through. There might be no other horcruxes, or there might be a hundred. They might be artifacts of power or turds in a field.
Well, that last was unlikely. He doubted he’d have lowered himself to that extent.
****
The first time what Ginny wanted overrode what he wanted, Tom was appalled. She thought the chickens were fascinating and wanted to know why her family didn’t have any. “They’d be dead useful for the eggs!”
He tried to force her to raise her wand to kill them. She ought to have been that far under his thrall. She ought to have been completely unaware of what she was doing.
Instead, she asked, “Why do you want me to kill them?” She looked around, and he realized she was counting the sleeping chickens. “I didn’t think you were like my brothers!”
If Tom had had teeth to clench, they’d have shattered under the pressure of not yelling at the brat. “Every year,” he told her, making up lies as fast as he could, “Hogwarts needs a challenge for the students, for the ones with a destiny. I didn’t like to tell you before because I thought you might feel used, but the whole reason I’m here at all is to arrange a challenge that the teachers don’t know is coming.”
Her eyes went wide. “Oh! For Harry, then?”
Tom made himself count to ten before answering. “Of course! Who else? Part of the test is if he can spot it’s you, in his own House, his best friend’s sister even.” Harry Potter might as well serve some sort of purpose beyond being a puzzle that Tom couldn’t currently solve. “Or if anyone else sees it, will Harry believe them? And what will he-- or they-- do about it.”
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt.” Ginny looked around at the chickens again. “Can’t we just make it look like I killed them and send them off somewhere else?”
Tom had rather been looking forward to killing something as a way of dealing with his frustrations over being forced to court Ginny’s good will, but he supposed that disappearing chickens would do well enough to hint at terrors to come. Time enough for murder when he had full control of Ginny.
Tom was very glad he’d studied and excelled at magics well beyond the Hogwart’s curriculum. Sending living objects elsewhere without harming them was a form of apparition, and that was supposed to be limited to oneself and what one was touching and should be completely impossible on school grounds. But I am the Heir to Slytherin. All things are possible for me.
Under Tom’s coaching, Ginny mastered the necessary spells well enough that Tom could force them to work when she cast them. She didn’t tell him where to send the chickens, so he dropped them into the orphanage where he had grown up. He hoped that that would upset some people. The idea that the building might no longer exist never occurred to him.
The whole thing took much longer than Tom had originally planned, so Ginny got no sleep that night. She laughed and said that her yawning might be a clue if anyone was paying attention. “It’s clever to pick a first year,” she told him. “Nobody looks at us at all.”
Tom refrained from telling her that someone older would have been infinitely more useful to him.
****
Given the girl’s reaction to killing chickens, Tom should have expected her to balk at sending the basilisk out. He should also have expected that he wouldn’t be able to force her into it.
At least, as far as he could tell, she hadn’t noticed him trying to force her.
He tried to think of the right words to persuade her into obedience. He tried to think of a way he could hurt her, could punish her. Then he tried to think of a way to get her to pass the diary to someone else, someone controllable. If he’d been able to, he’d have snarled and set something on fire.
Maybe she’d let him teach her other spells, and he could gain control of her that way?
At least she liked the basilisk. She said that she wished that her brother, Charlie, could meet it. She thought he’d be thrilled.
Tom wondered how many brothers the girl had.
She didn’t realize that they were speaking parseltongue but did say that she wanted to learn the language. Apparently Charlie said that creatures were more likely to be friendly if one spoke their language.
Ginny giggled and added, “Or at least try. Charlie’s kind of terrible with languages. Bill’s much better.”
Tom wondered how long he’d have to put up with her before he had drawn enough power to escape the diary. He expected she’d die then, and he let his mind wander over the ways it might happen.
But he wasn’t getting stronger the way he expected. He started trying to reach out for life force that wasn’t Ginny’s. Surprisingly, that worked better. He was pretty sure that he could gain power that way, enough to manifest. It might take a little longer than he’d originally expected, but it would work as long as the girl kept carrying the diary while she was around other people.
Then he realized that, while his power didn’t decrease when she wasn’t nearby, he started becoming stupider very rapidly. He hoped that becoming physically alive again would remove that dependency, but nothing about this process was working the way he’d expected based on his research.
Possibly what he’d read had been… incomplete. He really should have persuaded someone else to try the process first so that he could see where problems might lie.
So he set out to make Ginny love him. That meant learning a lot of things he hadn’t bothered with about her life. He’d focused his previous questions about the people around her on her professors as the greatest threat, the ones most likely to notice something off about the diary or about Ginny’s behavior, and on Harry Potter as the one who had defeated his older self.
He went back and forth between fear of Potter, contempt for his older self’s apparent weakness, and complete puzzlement as to how such a thing was possible. Even the most incompetent of wizards should not lose a fight with a toddler.
****
Tom glanced over his shoulder once to assure himself that Ginny was both still asleep and still floating along behind him. She’d given him her wand without hesitation when he emerged from the diary, and he hadn’t been surprised in the least to discover that it answered to him as well as his own wand ever had. He’d have to study that eventually. It certainly meant something.
Every spell he’d tried had worked as well as he’d hoped, and Ginny had applauded. He showed off a little as he imagined a fond older brother might. He thought that was how Ginny viewed him and hoped that would make the next steps easier. He might or might not be able to sever the magical bonds between them without harming himself, and he had decided some time before that it would be easier to deal with Ginny like she was certain to be a permanent fixture in his life.
If she ended up not needing to be-- Well, he could certainly take steps then, and those would be easier if she loved him.
After about an hour of experimentation, he asked her, “Do you trust me?”
Her expression became very serious, and she nodded.
“I’m going to do a spell so that we can always find each other.” It was a lie, and it wasn’t. Tom didn’t currently know such a spell. He wanted one. He’d make it himself if necessary. “I just need you to be asleep first.”
She stifled a giggle with a hand over her mouth. “It really is very late. I don’t want to think what Professor McGonagall will say if I fall asleep in her class.”
Tom knew that Ginny was never going back to any Hogwarts class, but he’d decided that, even if Ginny trusted him, she’d balk at leaving without a better story than he’d managed to come up with yet.
But, if she was asleep, anything at all might have happened. If he got her far enough away, she’d have no way to check his story, not for a very long time. She was brave and bright and talented, but she was also only eleven.
He’d been a little afraid that he wouldn’t be able to put her to sleep with a spell. It had seemed entirely possible that she’d be immune to his magic. He suspected that her consent mattered.
He wouldn’t wake her until they were somewhere on the Continent. He had that long to come up with a solid story that she’d believe about why they were no longer at Hogwarts.
He smiled at the sleeping girl before turning away. Fortunately, the corridors were empty at three in the morning. Out of courtesy to Ginny, he had decided not to leave any corpses behind.
She still thought him kind.
Professor McGonagall took three minutes to answer her door. When she opened it, she had her wand ready. She lowered it a little on seeing him, and Tom was pleased that he’d guessed right, that his robes would pass well enough.
She blinked and frowned as she realized that she didn’t recognize him. “Who--?”
Tom saw the moment when she realized that she did, in fact, recognize him.
She started to raise her wand to attack, but he was just a bit faster.
“Imperio.” He made the word sound casual even while he put all of his power behind it. He’d gotten enough of a sense of her personality while he was still trapped to be sure that that would enrage her.
She fought, of course, but he’d surprised her and pressed that advantage. She had more precision, more experience, but he had more power, both his own and Ginny’s, and had used the spell before.
He had never doubted the outcome. He was sure he had never doubted it.
And, really, all the other potential targets were too far from Gryffindor Tower. He’d have enjoyed playing a little with Ginny’s most hated teacher, Professor Snape, and the potions classroom certainly had enough worth stealing to be a tempting target, but the dungeons were a long way to go with Ginny in tow.
Once he, the professor, and Ginny were all inside McGonagall’s quarters, Tom looked around. “I didn’t want Ginny to see this part,” he said. He hadn’t decided yet whether or not he was going to let McGonagall remember any of this at all. He lowered Ginny gently onto McGonagall’s rumpled bed.
He turned back to McGonagall. “She and I will be well away from Hogwarts by the time everyone else wakes. I just need someone to--” He hesitated, considering his words. “She will want her things and her familiar. I expect both of us would like to have some food for our travels.” He sat on the bed near Ginny and wondered if McGonagall would ever be willing to sleep there again.
Assuming he let her remember.
“Sit,” he told her.
She did.
“Ginny is eleven and knows nothing of the Muggle world anyway, and my knowledge--” The word felt bitter in his mouth, and he had to fight down an urge to make McGonagall hurt to balance it. “My knowledge is half a century out of date. I’m fairly certain that we’ll need money, and I would rather not draw the attention of the Ministry just yet.” He looked at the wand in his hand then raised it so that she could see it, too. “I’m quite sure I’m of age, but this is hers. Is the Trace on the wand or on the child? Or on the general location?”
She fought to swallow the words. “The child.” She sounded as if she were choking.
He nodded. The general location would have been better, but there was certain to be something he could do about the Trace on Ginny. “I want to hire a… witch of good character, I suppose. Ginny will need a woman to tell her all of those things that girls need to learn.” He had only the vaguest idea of what that might mean, and he had no particular interest in learning. “I thought about taking you or one of the other teachers or even her mother, but she knows all of you. I think she’d realize eventually that I’d coerced you. She’s still sentimental enough to be bothered by it.”
McGonagall’s face showed clearly that she understood that he wouldn’t be bothered in the slightest.
He hoped it wouldn’t occur to her that he might, in some way, be vulnerable to Ginny’s whims, that her anger might be more than a minor irritation. He smiled. “She’s a charming child. I’m very curious to see what I can make her into.” He put enough twist into the words that McGonagall could draw the conclusions that would horrify her most. Better that than the truth.
“Go and pack Ginny’s things. Use someone else’s trunk if you see or think of one better than hers that you can get without drawing attention. More space on the inside would be better. Pack us food, too, with spells to keep it fresh.” He considered for a moment. “If the library has maps or books on travel for wizards, either in Britain or elsewhere in the world, I want those, too. When you come back, write down any names you can think of of witches who might suit our needs and not be missed.” He stood and stretched. “It feels so good to have a body again!”
McGonagall stood.
He gave her mind a little more of a push to keep her from showing any sign of her unhappiness in her behavior and posture. “You’re doing a good thing, Professor. Think of how many people I might have to kill if I have to do this the hard way. All of those children...”
She shuddered as the Imperius took full effect. “My trunk--” she said.
He shook his head. “I’ll be using that.” He saw her out the door then sealed it so that it would only open for her or for him. He found her trunk easily enough. As he’d hoped, it was much larger on the inside. He might even be able to hide Ginny in it in an emergency. He pulled out all of McGonagall’s things then took the trunk out of the room.
He needed to find things to steal. He very much doubted that McGonagall had much money on hand, but the school itself held fortunes. If he was careful. Very, very careful.
Tom smiled. He was always careful.