The Stars in Her Eyes Shine Brightest at Night

The Stars in Her Eyes Shine Brightest at Night

“Dark, horror of darkness, my darkness, drowning, swirling around me, crashing wave on wave—unspeakable, irresistible headwind, fatal harbor!”—Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

Ginny Weasley was not surprised when they lost.

They had underestimated the Dark Lord; she had known that from the start. She had determined early on that they would never be able to understand the complexity with which he formulated his plans; if he had a failing, it was that he delighted in the convoluted, the arcane. She had never been surprised that his plans worked, even though they had laughed and said they were too intricate, too easily unraveled by pulling at one thread that made up the tapestry of his evil design.

The thread they had pulled had been the wrong one; the underestimation of his mental prowess had left them all dead.

Except for her.

When they had dragged her into his chamber and thrown her at his feet, she had stared into his crimson eyes and had seen nothing there that reminded her of the dark-eyed boy she remembered, shivering and cold in the secret chamber below her beloved Hogwarts.

Had he recognized her? She was young enough, and rightly terrified, and there was a terrible hope in her breast that he would have mercy on her, that he would remember a shaking and terrorized little girl pouring her heart out to him.

She had enough naiveté left that she thought perhaps she might have, in her childish innocence, left some bright spot within the darkness of his twisted soul.

Several bouts of Crucio later, she knew that to be wrong.

When they took her and locked her in a cell, she thought perhaps he had remembered, after all. It was dank and horrible except for the ceiling. That was charmed to look like the night sky. Although she had to sleep on the stone floor with nothing underneath her, she thought that perhaps it would be a refuge of sorts for her. The first night, as she lay there shivering, she counted the stars and was absurdly comforted.

Perhaps he has some kindness within him. After all, he didn’t kill me. And he gave me a cell with a ceiling of stars.

She looked up at that sky, all those glittering stars, and remembered Astronomy as she picked out constellations that she remembered. She waited for the inexorable change of seasons, wondering if it would sadden her, or make her happy, to see the stars shift in the sky above.

It soon became apparent however, that he had not meant this gesture in kindness, for the stars did not change, no matter how much time went by.

And it slowly drove her insane to see it. Night, day, it did not matter. May, December, February or August, it was all the same. She had nothing else to look at and even when she tried to keep her eyes closed, she always ended up staring at it, nonetheless. And each day she made herself wait as she awoke, hoping still that the sky would change, that the stars would be in a different place, or even that the moon would be out, swollen and full.

Or, though it filled her with dread, that the stars would be gone completely.

But although she hoped and wished, it remained the same. The stars endured, like her; they shone cold and unforgiving and she wept each morning when she saw.

He tormented her further, throwing that promise of movement and action at her, and never delivering. Stilted, unchanged, passive. In her prison, she became like those stars trapped in the night sky above; sparkling, beautiful, and forever stranded in darkness.

It would drive her mad, and he knew it. Far from kindness, it was a slow torture designed for one for whom a special hatred was reserved.

They always underestimated him, always.

****
When she started screaming, he knew she understood.

He ensured her prison cell was close to him, and he waited for her to appreciate what he’d done. Her thoughts had been vibrant, easy to read as she’d been tossed at his feet.

Does he remember me?

Of course he remembered her.

He always remembered those who had failed him.

Did you think I’d make it easy for you, Ginevra? Kill you with a flash of light, merciful and fast? You failed me, and I do not forgive. I have no mercy. None.

He had her brought to him after a week of delicious screaming. She was a trembling ball of terror and mess when she was thrown to the ground before him.

Nagini hissed at her, filthy, filthy, and Voldemort laughed.

“Do you like your prison cell, Ginevra?” he asked her.

“Please…have mercy,” she whispered. “Make the stars change.”

He laughed, cold and high. “No.”

***

He stared outside at the night sky, smug in the knowledge that the stars he saw would never be the ones she did, when the screaming stopped.

A few moments later, Lucius Malfoy came through the door, dragging a bleeding, unconscious Ginny Weasley.

“My lord,” he bit out, staring down at her.

Voldemort looked down, and what he saw made him laugh.

She’d torn her eyes out.

****
When she awoke, she was lying in a bed. She’d passed out from the pain of it, what she’d done. It had taken her three hours to do it, to gather the nerve. She had finally found her courage and in a rush of thumbs and quick, stabbing motions, she’d finally found relief from the endlessly unmoving sky. But though it had worked, she had never, ever felt such pain.

She had held her broken and crushed eyes in her hands in a moment, felt them wet and sticky, before she’d passed out. How was it now that she could see? I crushed them in my fingers, to be sure. I felt them break.

“Silly, foolish girl.”

The voice was familiar, and when she could focus on the direction it came from, she became aware of three things.

One: she was tied to a bed, arms and legs spread. Two: she was naked. Three: she was in the Chamber of Secrets.

And then he stepped from the shadows; not her scarlet-eyed captor, the monster who had driven her slowly mad, but rather the serious, dark-eyed boy she had known years ago.

The one she’d almost killed for.

Tom Riddle.

“T-Tom?” Her voice, unused to doing anything but screaming or speaking in a whisper (she’d not begged, no, not since the first time), came out rough, scratchy.

“Hullo, Ginny.” He moved over to sit on the bed with her, still serious, dressed in his Slytherin’s prefect badge and school tie, robes fresh and crisp as if he had just donned them this morning..

“Wha—am I dead?”

He laughed, and there was an echo in it of the madman he would become. “Oh, no. I wouldn’t have let him kill you.”

She stared at him, trembling in her bonds. Is this some new torment he has devised to drive me mad?

“No,” Tom breathed, and reached out one hand to caress her cheek. She flinched; his hands were cold.

She forgot he had the gift of Occlumency, that it was something within him even before he was no longer a mere man. Like Parseltongue, it was a gift inherent to Tom Marvolo Riddle, remaining in the cold and evil countenance of Lord Voldemort almost six decades later.

Was he evil, even now?

“Of course,” he said, crawling up closer to her. He was running his hands down her body, delighting in her shivers. He drew his hand down her stomach, the touch light. “I have never been anything else, Ginny.”

Ginny. Tom calls her Ginny. The Dark Lord calls her Ginevra.

“We are the same,” he breathed, “but he does not want from you what I do.”

He put a finger under her chin and tipped her up to look into her eyes—whole, not broken as they had been—and his eyes were mad even now, when they are human.

“Where are my eyes? How can I see?”

He kissed her with his cold lips, and she kept hers resolutely shut, stilling her body.

He pulled back immediately. “Ginny,” he said, “why won’t you kiss me?” He looked confused for a moment and then irate. Leaping up with a lithe grace, he leveled his wand at her (the same wand that killed them all, her family and her friends, that made her cell a terror of cold stars and brutal light), and she screamed, loud and long, sobbing in her anguish.

“Stop it!” he roared, standing next to her, wand shaking as his hand trembled from his ire. “Stop it right now!”

She couldn’t—all she could see was that sinister, thin length of wood. All she could remember was the cold glare of the stars, that had driven her mad, taken her mind and finally made her gouge her eyes out, and oh god, why could she still see?

He backhanded her, and she stopped screaming. The pain was almost welcome; dark, brutal, refreshing. She ran her tongue over her top lip, stained with blood. His blow had cut her lip on her tooth, and she tasted blood, coppery and tangy-sweet.

“Ginny,” he said, voice strained with agony. “Why do you want to destroy me? Why do you refuse me?” He put his head in his hands and moaned. When he looked up, the madness was gone and his face was tormented.

“Why am I still here!” he shouted, voice echoing in the stone chamber. “Potter should have ended it! Why does he bring me back?”

Ginny flinched, heart racing. “Harry is—” Eyes drifted closed and opened again, full of tears. “Harry is dead, Tom. You killed him.”

“I’m not talking about Harry!” he roared again, facing her. “I’m talking about him, you know who,” he said in a painful mockery of Voldemort’s past title.

“You are him,” she said, confused. “You’ve always been him.”

“Have I?” He walked up to her, the emotion draining off of him like water from a stone. “Have I really, young Ginny? Do you think that? Do you think I was born evil?”

She stared at him and slowly shook her head. “No,” she said dully. “I think you found evil and embraced it, because it gave you what you wanted.”

“What do you think I wanted?” He was pulling his tie off now, eyes intent on her face.

“Power,” she said immediately. “You wanted power.”

“No, I wanted respect,” he hissed. Hands yanked off his robe, tossing it to the floor. His prefect’s badge gleamed, not dulled by the decades that had passed since he’d worn it, flesh and blood.

“You did have it, Tom. You were smart, clever. You told me so.”

“No, I didn’t,” he said sulkily, and he sounded like a seventeen year old boy being denied a new broom. “I had nothing.”

When he came to her, he was wearing only a pair of trousers. “I had nothing, Ginny. I had to make them afraid of me. Why?”

“I—I don’t know, Tom!” she said, shrieking the words as his intent was made clear. She hadn’t faced this from Voldemort or his Death Eaters—her body had never been violated. How ironic I should suffer this from him, a memory. “Don’t do this,” she said. “I fear you already. I will fear you as much as you want. Please, Tom.”

He stopped, hands at the fastenings of his trousers. “I don’t want you to be afraid. I want you to want it. That is power, Ginny. To make you want me would be power.”

When he crawled up next to her, his hands began to stroke over her body in a soothing gesture. Ginny struggled against him, but he shook his head. “That only excites the beast within me,” he said. “Don’t struggle or you won’t like what I become.”

She forced herself to remain quiet underneath his attentions. His fingers were cold, but they began to warm as he stroked them over her; and Ginny, despite her fear, found herself breathless.

“Yes, fear makes a lovely aphrodisiac, does it not?” He was next to her on the bed, pressing against her. She could feel his erection against her side and he was nuzzling her neck. “Your skin is sensitized and all your nerves are pulsing, alive…” Fingers moved over her nipples, pulling.

She tried not to moan, but it was useless. No one had touched her, caressed her, in so long…

“Do you want your hands free?” he said, licking her neck. She shuddered, and it was no longer from fear.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Okay,” he said, hands reaching for his wand. With a wave, he released her bonds and they stared at each other, and he smiled slowly. “Oh, pretty Ginny,” he whispered. “I know you want me.”

Hands traveled down to the shameful wetness between her thighs. “Yes,” she moaned. “I always have…” It was the darkest of all the secrets she had ever harbored in her secret heart, that she wanted him, just as she always had. Tom Riddle, with cold hands and a colder smile, slid his fingers inside of her as she moaned.

When he entered her, they rolled on the bed and fucked with abandon. She was unbound and she scratched at him, fingers drawing blood on his cold skin.

“Tom,” she moaned, biting his neck. Her body was flushed, skin hot, and she burned from the insane, mad desire of it. He was still so cold; even the rigid length of his cock was chilled as it moved in and out of her.

“I want to warm you,” she said, legs and arms tangled around him. “Let me warm you.”

“You can’t, Ginny girl,” he whispered, sucking on her nipples, fingers twisting her clit. “No one can.”

When he became rougher, she was too far gone to care, but she noticed his body was becoming like ice on top of her; chilled and coldly brutal. He seemed thinner, taller, strange. Her touch became hesitant, but his did not. He took her harder, his fingers more demanding, growling low in his throat.

“Come for me,” he said, and there was a strangeness in his voice as the room seemed to swirl around her. “Come for me, Ginevra.”

When she came, she screamed from the depths of her shaken and bruised soul, because the voice was no longer Tom’s. She knew whose it was, she knew who had brought her such horrible, destructive pleasure. Her body was arched into his and her nails scoured his back, as his mouth bit her neck hard enough to draw blood. He groaned and spilled himself within her and still, she kept screaming as the pleasure still rolled over her in thick, delicious waves.

Fear is the best aphrodisiac, Ginny.

When Ginny opened her eyes, she was staring into a pair of triumphant scarlet eyes, slitted and glowing with a maniacal madness.

“I gave you your eyes back, Ginevra,” he said, and his voice was high and cold. “With a few…improvements. Now, you only see what I want you to see. I must admit, taking your body was a sweet and unexpected pleasure.”

There was no Tom Riddle, there had never been. “Tom…”

“Ginevra, you know very well he died when Harry Potter stuck the basilisk fang in the diary.”

He pulled away from her, and his mouth was stained crimson with her blood. His tongue snaked out to lick it off, his face terrible and cruel. His wand was grasped in his spidery fingers, fingers that had stroked her, brought her pleasure.

She keened, the destroyed wail of someone who has lost everything, and she had.

The flash of light was almost welcome, but she hated that the last thing she heard was his laughter.