Chapter 6
6.
Tom does have an opinion, it turns out, on just about every question Ginny and Luna can think to ask. And he has his own inquiries for Luna, and many more for Luna’s mother’s books. Late at night, when Ginny is curled up in bed with a muggle flashlight and fresh ink (Luna shows her how to make ink out of the first ripe buckthorn of the year, which smells a bit strange but serves the purpose well enough), he admits that he thinks half of what Luna’s mother wrote is absolute garbage, but Luna seems to have a knack for knowing which of the recipes will work or not, whether or not there’s any magic involved at all. The Balm of Sunny Days, for example, does make Ginny’s skin feel warm when she rubs it on, but though it makes Ginny smile Tom thinks that the feeling might be a mild allergic reaction and cautions her against using it.
Ginny's fears about her two only friends abandoning her prove to have been completely unfounded, to her great relief. Luna only occasionally takes up the quill to respond to Tom’s questions. She says it feels a bit invasive, but she wouldn’t ask Ginny to write to him when his questions are too personal. And Tom, while he remains interested in Luna and entertained by the non-traditional potions knowledge that talking to her brings about, assures Ginny that he’d much rather talk to her. It’s not that he doesn’t like Luna, he says, but for all her potential as a potioneer, he feels it is rather stifled by her strict adherence to her father’s beliefs.
There are many unsolved mysteries in the wizarding world that I should very much like to be the one to answer, he admits to her. The existence of nargles, however, is not one of them. Once she is out of his influence at Hogwarts, perhaps she will come to be more reasonable.
Ginny doesn't really want Luna to change, but Tom's always mentioning how things will be different once they're at Hogwarts, so maybe she's naive about just how great Luna could be. Tom is always polite, of course, no matter what he tells Ginny when they are alone. And his constant companionship reminds Ginny again and again how lucky she is to have two good friends who can help her learn how to brew. He didn’t have that, Ginny knows. He had to do everything himself. He didn't even know there were proper rules and methods for magic until he got his Hogwarts letter, so he had to figure things out all on his own. Ginny’s just glad that, with their patient help, she might have a chance to be half as impressive as them.
Too bad neither of them seems particularly interested in flying, 'cause that's about the only thing she could imagine helping them with in return.
Their ingenuity becomes clearer as summer stretches on, creeping closer to the end of July. Harry Potter is still missing, which means her family is all preoccupied, which means Ginny’s more and more able to sneak by them when she gets back from school—or sneak out in the morning, letting Mum think she’s already gone off in the floo, and spend the whole day at Luna’s place. And the more they brew, the more Tom begins to make suggestions to modify the recipes or to try something simple he knows with a few modifications for the ingredients they have on hand, or to go off recipe entirely, to experiment with combinations with specific effects. He bemoans that they don’t have a wand, and promises they will be able to make much more interesting brews when they are at Hogwarts, if their interest in the subject persists. Ginny offers to borrow one of her brothers’ wands, just for a day—they’ll think they just misplaced it, and she can hide it somewhere ridiculous and ‘come across it’ later on, but Tom worries about the Trace, since Luna’s dad so rarely uses spells these days. It’s probably for the best, anyway, since Ginny’s about as good at acting as Ron is.
You might be capable of more than I think possible, in any case, he writes. We might try something a little more potent if you are interested? I doubt the latent magic here will be enough for it to succeed, but if you are intent enough… I just need to make a few more variations—unless you’ve made any progress on getting into your mother’s ingredients, Miss Luna.
Luna says she hasn’t. Ginny hasn’t ever seen Luna try, and even thinks to call her out on it, but… Luna had said the ingredients that are locked in the cupboards are dangerous. Even with the enchantments on the room, they’ve started a few fires, and even had to throw a potion out the window once, when it started expanding too quickly and letting out a noxious green fume. And every time something goes wrong, as exciting as it is, Ginny can’t help but remember that Luna’s mum died in here. Luna never seems to feel the same thrill that Ginny does. Of course, she’s not as sick as Ginny is. But… Ginny doesn’t know if she imagines it—she’s not as empathetic as Luna, after all, nor as understanding as Tom—but sometimes she thinks Luna’s face goes just a little slack, just as Ginny starts to panic, and Ginny has to be the one to resolve the situation because she’s not sure Luna’s going to move at all.
So she doesn’t bother about the cupboard. And she doesn’t mention her suspicions to Tom, either.
We will have to make do, Tom replies. In any case, as it requires a few more tricky ingredients… I am still attempting to calculate the exceptions we will have to make. And Miss Luna, if you would be amenable, tomorrow is the new moon, and there are a few ingredients that must be harvested within a specific window that there's a slim chance you might be able to locate within your woods…
Luna is amenable. Tom is quiet most of the next day while Ginny is at school, working, he tells her, through some rather complex calculations that he finds difficult as a memory—something literally from the past, he says, whose capacity for creative thought and problem-solving is inhibited by his very nature, although Ginny knows she has seen him grow over the last year, and learn from what she has been able to tell him about the future. And though she tries to sneak out as soon as she gets home, Mum catches her and puts her to work with Ron, who is being punished for something he said regarding the stupidity of the Ministry, which is totally unfair because Ginny hasn’t done anything at all, so why is she being punished, too—
But the next day is Saturday, which means that she can’t be made to waste her time at the Ministry school. She runs all the way to the Lovegood’s house, arriving a bit sweaty but with the blood pumping through her veins and making her alive, and lets herself in, as she does most days.
Luna is sitting at the kitchen table, alone, eating eggs off a chipped blue plate that someone must have made by hand ages ago. “Good morning,” she says. “You’re very early today, Ginny.”
“I’m excited,” she says. “Were you able to prep the ingredients like Tom asked? I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help. Mum caught me and it was awful and Ron wouldn’t let me get away.”
“Have you eaten breakfast?”
“Er, no,” Ginny says. Luna gestures to the stove.
“I made some for Daddy, but he went off with my uncle to meet with some investors,” she says, face a bit too vacant. “And he wanted to go to get photos for one of the interviews he is printing… I don’t think he’ll be back until supper.”
Ginny carefully spoons the two eggs still in the pan up onto a plate she finds in the drying rack by the sink, though she leaves the tomatoes. Mum always tries to make her eat tomatoes, just because she says that Ginny is being stubborn about not liking them when she hasn’t tried them in years. Luna pours her some tea, too, and they open up the diary and tell Tom they’re about ready to start, if he’s finished his calculations.
It very likely won’t work quite right, he says. But do keep going even if it looks off. I can adjust the recipe based on where things go wrong. We’ll know fairly quickly whether it works or not.
It is, after all, a sort of potion of scrying—something that will let them see Tom’s face, if it goes well, or perhaps just the image of the diary, considering it is difficult to account for something of a magical anomaly. Or so he says. They might even see the face of the original Tom, assuming he is even still alive—Tom doubts that will happen, though. The magic depends on the intent of the brewers, and as long as they focus on the wish to see Tom, that is what they should see—if they see anything at all.
If nothing else, it will be good practice before we do the real work, at Hogwarts.
Ginny helps Luna do the dishes—she doesn't mind doing them so much, when she's the one offering—and they head up the stairs, Luna talking Ginny through the brewing process once again as they set up. There’s quite a variety of ingredients in play. Many, Luna has already prepared: the white flowers that she picked at the darkest minutes of the new moon she suspended in rainwater overnight seem to glow in their vial, while another vial holds the buckthorn ink that they made, since Tom says the process concentrates the compounds in the berries and might overcome some of the weaknesses of using it as a substitute for a type of Chinese berry Ginny can’t hope to ever remember the name of, especially since it was made with the intent of Ginny communicating with Tom. The potions studio gets hot quite quickly as they chop and mince and grind the rest, but they don’t dare open the window when it is so windy outside; they’ve had incidents with some of the hanging ingredients blowing into the cauldron in the past, and Tom says that since this potion is potentially more powerful than what they have been brewing, they need to be extra careful not to allow for any unintended additions. Though with the heat, who knows how much of their sweat is sneaking in.
And it takes hours. Ginny knew it would—Tom’s been working on this for a while, and when he first proposed the idea, he mentioned that it would be time consuming, but when she goes down to make some cucumber sandwiches for her and Luna, it’s nearly four o’clock in the afternoon.
Luna, for her part, seems to be enjoying it, and despite Tom’s concerns, everything appears to be going as planned. A bit more steam than they expected, and a few color issues, but Tom is quick to correct with a temperature adjustment or ingredient addition, and as they go along, Luna seems to open up and get bolder about making the corrections herself, before he can tell them. It’s amazing to watch. Ginny’s known for a year that Tom is brilliant, but the last month has really hammered home that despite how strange Luna can be, despite how Ginny sometimes thinks neither she nor Luna have a clue what to make out of half the things that come out of her mouth, she’s already ten times more witch-y than Ginny can ever imagine being.
“And now for the flowers,” Luna finally says, as the sun is just beginning to set outside. Xeno still isn't back, which is good, because Luna might've had to go down to make excuses if he were, and Ginny gets antsy every time Luna leaves the room. “And if nothing changes, we let it sit overnight, is what he said, yes?”
“Right,” says Ginny, glancing at the diary. Tom’s been leaving the next instruction on the left-hand page while he responds to her comments on the right. He says it takes a bit more focus for him to split his attention like that, but if they can stay on task for nearly ten hours making a potion, then he, a mere book, can display text. (As if he could ever be mistaken for a mere book.) “And… what exactly are the flowers supposed to do?”
Luna frowns, holding up the little vial to the window, tapping the glass with one finger and sending the tiny white flowers swirling about. “You’ll have to ask Tom,” she says. “I’ve never used them before. I used to gather ingredients with my mother when I was just a little girl, and she never told me about these. Maybe because they must be picked at specific times… there was plenty of brewing she did without me around to distract her.”
Luna looks down at the potion. It is inky and dark at this point, though it catches the first yellows and oranges of the sunset outside, glimmering across it like reflections of candlelight. “How about I do the stirring, and you add the flowers,” she finally says. “It will be easier with the two of us. Ask Tom if there’s any special method.”
Only to focus on the intent as you add them, Tom answers. This is where we would normally introduce the wand, after all. It will need as much magic as can be gathered by intent alone if there’s any chance of it working.
Ginny sets the diary down by the cauldron, taking the vial from Luna—it nearly slips from her sweaty fingers, and she curses as she gets a tighter grip on it. She has to really dig her fingers into the cork, as well, and when she finally pries it out, there’s a fine white steam that escapes with it. Luna, who is picking up her mother’s stirring rod, seems unbothered. She looks at Ginny and smiles—that damn smile that makes Ginny want to kiss her all over again, fuck—and says, “Can’t hurt to try, right?”
Ginny’s flushing as she nods, turning her face wholly towards the cauldron. Now is not the time to be thinking of kissing Luna; she’s supposed to be thinking about Tom—this is just like when she tested that dream potion they made, and she woke up with a half-remembered dream of her and Luna and Tom all together and—it’s not the time for that, either! Tom, Tom; Merlin please don’t make her be the one to fuck this up. She wants to see Tom, desperately; she wants him to see her, too, for more than just familiar handwriting showing up in his book; she wants him to see something new, to give him new faces to remember; and she wants to see him, to know if he’s as she imagined, with that charming smile and those eyes—
Luna begins to stir, counting, slowly, under her breath, “Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—”
Ginny jerks, tipping the flowers into the slowly swirling dark liquid. The rainwater settles on top, for a moment, unmerging, and they lean closer, their breath and sweat mingling with the steam. Slowly, one by one, the flowers sink into the darkness and vanish.
And then everything is white. White and cold and noise and pain—Ginny is flung back, slamming into the workbench, and then she’s on the ground, covering her ears at the awful sound, the shrieking piercing straight through her hands, the world bright and red through her closed eyes—and then all at once it sucks away, all of it, the sound and chill and—everything goes dark—
For a moment, all she feels is a vague hurt. Then she realizes, no, it’s not pain, there’s just something directly on top of her—she opens her eyes and is confused to find herself on her back, face-to-foot with the leg of one of the stools from the workbench. She shifts her shoulders and it clatters sideways, into the leg of the table, and as she extracts herself she realizes everything is wet, there’s glistening black liquid all over the floor, and she twists and realizes the upturned cauldron is sitting on the floor a few feet from where her head had been. Beyond that, a few feet away, sits Luna, huddled against the cabinets, a glassy expression on her face.
“That was… unexpected,” Luna says softly.
She’s holding her hand out, staring at her slowly flexing fingers like there’s something wrong with them—maybe there is. The vapor had felt cold, but maybe Luna had been splashed by the potion as it first came out of the cauldron, maybe she’d been burnt. Ginny opens her mouth to ask, but then she’s coughing, something dry and prickly clawing at her throat, and when she opens her eyes again, Luna’s just watching Ginny with a vacant expression, and Ginny thinks, Oh, Merlin, her mum died in here—
And then Ginny notices what’s missing. Her hands sweep out across the ground, through the cold, slippery liquid—
“No, no, no,” Ginny cries, grabbing the cabinets and pulling herself to her feet, ignoring her legs’ protests. “Fire and water—Luna, Luna he’s—Tom, he’s—the diary, help me—”
“It wouldn’t be damaged that easily.”
The cauldron was upturned, but the fire is still burning. Contained, thank Merlin, to its original pile, but the explosion seems to have pushed everything away from it, cracking the glass in the window, tearing bunches of dried herbs away from the bottoms of the upper cabinets—and the diary is no longer where she’d set it. “Tom?” Ginny cries again, like he might hear her and respond. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry… if something happened to him, I’ll, I don’t—Ah!”
She spots it on the other side of the stool she’d pushed off herself, and sweeps down to snatch it up out of the liquid, letting out a cry of relief at finding it whole and unmarked. More coughs shake through her, but she is already prying open the pages—
“It is quite indestructible,” Luna insists, but she doesn’t know that. How could she know that? She’s only spoken to Tom a handful of times, she hasn’t been the one keeping Tom safe, she doesn’t understand how important Tom is. She flips quickly through the pages, searching for the last of Tom’s writing—and there it is, slightly smudged from the damp of the potion that has seeped in from the edges. Unchanging, unfading. Still.
No. No!
“Well, for the moment, at least.” Luna rocks forward slowly, coming to stand over Ginny, and reaches down to pull the book from Ginny’s fingers—but she won’t let go. She can’t let go. She— If she lets go, she’ll have to admit it—admit that there’s something, something that’s gone terribly, terribly wrong—
Luna relents. “I suppose you might as well keep that. For sentimentality’s sake. Soon it will be nothing more than a diary.”
“No, he, he can’t,” Ginny stammers. “He’s— How can you say that, he’s— Oh, God… I’ve failed, I…”
“I must admit it is a surprise to disagree with you. You’ve succeeded spectacularly. So spectacularly, I can only imagine that it was a sheer force of will that did it in the end, as those flowers were—nothing. Useless. The potion needed faebell flowers to succeed, and those only come from the most magical of places, not the silly little wood of this silly little hill. Though the rainwater did have the expected reaction… hm…”
Ginny stares at the blurring words. If she looks away, they might disappear, and then—and the—but the words coming out of Luna’s mouth don’t make any sense. “What are you talking—it exploded, it—he’s—”
“Yes. That may have been just the surge necessary. Or… perhaps simply a realigning of circumstances… She was supposed to die here, I see it now…”
“What?” Ginny looks sharply up. She’s heard Luna talk about her mother before, and it had always been as an accident, a tragedy, not—and now Tom—if this place is, is cursed, they should—
Luna’s looking off through the cracked window. Ginny must have been out for more than a moment; the sunset is nearly finished, brilliant red catching the clouds streaking through the darker sky. “Though perhaps she is simply more unhinged than I thought. It does seem tiring to be so open to people all the time… though that will surely fade…”
“Luna, what are you—”
Luna swivels her head to look down at Ginny, the sunset reflecting in her watery eyes. Her lips curve up into a smile, and—it’s not the smile it was before the explosion, the one that makes Ginny’s heart do flips—this one is confident and secretive, and sends a thrill down Ginny’s spine.
“Oh, but you have exceeded all expectations, Ginny,” she says, voice low and warm as embers in a dying fire. “And now, how fortuitous that you should get exactly what you wanted. A fitting reward.”
Ginny looks at the hand being extended to her. Down at the book in her lap. Up again, to that familiar-unfamiliar face—“T—Tom?”
“There you are.” She—no, he—takes Ginny’s hand and helps her up. Ginny is several inches taller than Luna, normally, but right now she feels so small, and—and that’s, that’s not only Luna, it’s—
“How?” Ginny breathes, studying the confident face with wonder. “Something went—you said we would get to see your face—not that I’m not happy to—to talk to you. Tom!”
Now that she’s talking face-to-face with him, her heart is racing, she must be flushing, but—but— It’s been nearly a year, a year of hoping, dreaming that someday she’d actually meet Tom, and—
“Oh, well, the face, yes.” He lets go of her and touches Luna’s cheek thoughtfully. “Such a lovely creature, Miss Luna is… but with a few years of groundwork, we can adjust things to be more—me.” He looks down, and the confident smile curls to something like contempt. “So many people see this body as an object to be acted upon, after all… what a shameful weakness. To be the victim of other people’s love. Not that it is not exploitable, but it will be… with the right…”
“Wait,” Ginny says. “Wait, Tom—a few years?”
“I know, I know, but these things must happen naturally—”
“You’re saying you’re going to be in Luna’s body for a few years?”
He looks up from pushing Luna’s trousers tighter against her hips. His smile returns. “Oh, Ginny,” he says, full of—something. “I do hate to break such sad news to you, when you are no doubt celebrating finally speaking to me, but I’m afraid that is my burden to bear. This isn’t Luna’s body anymore.”
There’s something in that look, something… it’s not pity at all. It’s almost… contempt. She backs away, into the table, and he watches her go, his smile only widening.
“Though really, it shouldn’t ruin the celebration at all! After all, you’re getting exactly what you wanted. After all, you’re one of those people who so covets this body, are you not? And I, I have never needed a body to earn your affections, so imagine how happy you will feel, now that I am here with you.” He steps forward, too, a longer step, so he is even closer than before, and Ginny is stuck against the table, unsure of why she feels like running—it’s Tom—as he reaches up to cup her face with one soft hand. “I can see Miss Luna’s mind, dear Ginny,” he says softly. “And she, oh, she is so weak. So caught up in other peoples’ pain. So afraid. And while she would do anything for her father, she would never give you anything for your love. No reward for your earnest affections. She wouldn’t even give you the courtesy of telling you no. But I, Ginny…”
And then his—her—lips are pressing into Ginny’s, and—
It’s nothing like that first kiss had been, awkward and unexpected; it’s all heat and closeness and the overwhelming knowledge that it’s Luna—it’s Tom—choosing to kiss her, showing her love—it’s like flying, and falling, it’s forgetting how to breathe—it’s—so right, but so—
Wrong.
Wrong? She doesn’t understand—
Tom slowly pulls away from her, and Ginny blinks, but the stars dotting her vision don’t quite vanish. “You could do with some practice,” he declares. “But there will be time for that. After all, dear Ginny, you are my knight in shining armor, my stalwart protector, are you not? You have taken such good care of this—” His hand taps against the diary, and she nearly flinches, the urge to yank it away so strong. “—that I can only imagine how well you will care for a precious person.”
“What,” Ginny breathes, her voice seeming to have been sucked out in that dizzying kiss. “What’s happened to—to Luna?”
Tom’s smile falls. The hand still on Ginny’s cheek pulls away, and he taps Luna’s fingers twice above Luna’s temple. “Oh, she’s in there, sleeping soundly,” he says. “And there she will stay—for now. She needs to be, unfortunately, for my body to keep. Imagine how horribly people would treat us, you and I, if they found out about this little accident? Though, once I have… established myself, I will of course extract what is left of her. Perhaps I will put her in a book—or a mirror, since you were so desperate to see my face? Yes, a… present for you, dear Ginny. So you might entertain yourself with her little stories.”
He turns now, stepping back, and glances around the potions laboratory. “In the meantime,” he says, more to himself than her, “I suppose this is going to have to do for now. And… I wonder…”
He frowns, going over to the cabinets—he doesn’t walk like Luna. It’s weird. He moves with—with confidence, yes, but also a certain jerky movement that suggests there’s some mismatch between him and his body, like he’s somehow not meant to be there—
Somehow? He’s not—“Tom,” Ginny says. “Luna, she’s—you’re in her body, Tom, that’s—”
“My body, dear Ginny.” He grabs the handle of the nearest cupboard and gives a tug—it doesn’t move. He turns around again, towards the window, and stalks forward, more impatient now, producing a hiss of displeasure as his leg knocks against the corner of the workbench, and has to reach twice for the charred wand on the windowsill. “After fifty years, don't you think I deserve one?” He inspects the wand, turning it over in his hands, then, frowning, jabs it towards the center of the room. Nothing happens. “I thought not,” he mutters, dropping it. It hits the table and rolls off, and he crosses his arms over his chest, looking around the room. “No advantages to start out with, here? But we have overcome far worse.” He glances at Ginny thoughtfully, and her voice catches on further protests. “Perhaps we ought to convince your mother and father that Miss Luna intends to go to Diagon Alley on her own? There’s always such pity in their eyes, isn’t there—I’m sure your mother wouldn’t mind escorting us. Then we might truly get an idea of our resources…”
“Tom, are you listening to me?” Ginny repeats. “Tom, that’s—that’s Luna. You can’t just—it’s not right to just—”
“Oh, do be quiet,” he says, and almost like there’s a hand wrapping over Ginny’s mouth, she falls silent. “You seem to be harboring some misunderstandings about what is going to happen here—you are proving yourself to be nothing more than a silly little girl. But that can be forgiven, never fear. All can be forgiven.” He picks up the stirring stick, idly, inspecting it as he had inspected the wand, though he does not wave it before setting it aside. He turns, instead, towards the cupboards that have been open to them, the ones with Luna’s mother’s books, the spare vials and beakers and knives. He traces the spines of the books with some idle curiosity. “After all, the faithful should be rewarded. The loyal. And you are loyal, aren’t you, Ginny? Do tell me.”
“Yes,” she hears herself say.
“Of course you are.” He picks up a knife, toying with it, and sets it back down before turning to the next cupboard. It takes him two reaches to grab onto the cupboard door. “And you’ve proven yourself open to being taught. So I will—oh, this is so wasteful.”
He picks up a vial covered in dust, blowing it off, frowning at whatever is inside. When he sets it down, he looks around again, and goes to a door set into the wall in the far corner opening it with ease. Inside stands several brooms and mop. He selects one, frowning again at what he finds, and pulls it forcefully free from the rest, turning back towards Ginny, frowning at the oily black liquid spilled all over the laboratory floor as he comes.
“Our first order of business is to clean this mess up—take it,” he commands, holding out the mop. Ginny’s hand shakes as she tries to resist the order—she hates mopping, Tom knows this, Luna knows this—Mum always makes her mop the kitchen when she could to it in a second with her wand—but finds her fingers wrapping around the wood as he presses it into her hand, the diary falling to the floor. “Who knows what that potion will do if it sinks through the floorboards. Silly girl, feeling so safe in her mother’s protection—these charms won’t last five years without being renewed again, and another few solid blasts and they’ll probably take down the whole house with them. You clean up the floor, I’ll—argh!”
As he’s turning back towards the closet, Luna’s whole body lurches heavily to the side, knocking him into the workbench. “Stupid girl!” he snarls, and Ginny shrinks back—but it’s not her he’s yelling at. He pushes himself upright, storming back towards the closet, and draws out a bucket and a towel so old it’s gone stiff with dust. When he turns again and sees Ginny staring at him, the scowl on his face deepens—it’s unlike any expression Luna’s ever worn. And when he speaks, it is not like any voice she has spoken with before, it is clearer, and higher, and all the more terrifying for how soft it slips into her ears and her brain. “I asked you to clean it up, Ginny.”
She shudders into motion, the head of the mop falling into the black oily potion. Tom takes the bucket to the washbasin a few feet over, the pipes screaming to life to fill it, and water sloshes all over the sides as he hauls it to her, dropping it heavily. “There, not so hard now, is it?” he says. “We’re all in this together, you, Miss Luna, and I. So we had all better get nice and comfortable. Pick that up,” he says, gesturing to the stool. “If a potion’s studio is what I have, then I will make use of it, without this wretched dust.” He returns to the washbasin, running the water over the towel, ringing it out several times. Ginny fixes the stool, and then she picks up the cauldron, and though she longs to throw it at his head, to knock some sense into him, it’s Luna’s head she would be hitting, and so she puts it back over the fire. The oily black potion drips down into the flames in spluttering hisses, but Ginny’s got both hands on the mop again, turning and pushing it into the mess on the floor so she can clean—
Wait, why? Why is she doing this? Why is he making her do this?
Tom turns around again as he folds the towel down to the side of his hand, and spots her frozen there, halfway through a swipe with the mop. He sighs. “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” he says. “What a lot of bother you’re proving yourself to be. You don’t want to be a bother, do you, dear Ginny?”
No, something in her longs to assure him, but Ginny just stares.
“I suppose,” he says doubtfully, “that Xenophilius will be home soon enough. His wand will have to do, assuming that he’s not misplaced it and swapped it out with a stick. I would do away with him, but, well, we wouldn’t want anyone getting too invested in a fourteen-year-old girl. You are so easy to manipulate, after all; if I were to do anything else, they would be surprised! But never fear, dear Ginny: his wand will be enough. And since you care so much for me—you do care for me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she says quickly, because she does, “But—”
“Ah,” he cuts her off. “I did not ask for any ‘buts’. This is how it is now. Clean that up.” She jerks into motion, and he finishes folding his towel. “You’ll need to get over your surprise as well. We have been working towards this for months—nearly a year, have we not? How often have you told me you would give anything for me to be free of that prison? And now I'm here, and you know exactly what you need to do to be happy. Make sure that I’m safe, that no one suspects me, and always do your best to satisfy my expectations—which shouldn’t be difficult, as they are so, so low where you're—ah!”
As he goes to wipe a splash of potion off the nearest cupboard, he jerks again, and the towel flies out of his hand. His face and body contort with untempered rage. “WHAT DID I SAY?” he snarls, Luna’s voice grating and harsh. “You stupid girl—this is mine now! If you didn’t want me to take it, you should have—” He cuts off and twists again, forcing his body upright, and he looks around the room wildly, as though searching for some unseen assailant, white-blond hair seeming to float with the energy of his anger. He spots Ginny quickly, and his snarl deepens. “Come here,” he demands.
But seeing his face like that—Luna’s face like that—Ginny doesn’t want to. “No,” she manages to say, and steps back, shaking—and she slips in the potion, slamming back against the cabinet under the cauldron and sliding down with a cry of pain. She grabs for—for anything as he stomps towards her, and remembers the wand, on the floor, forcing herself to let go of the mop with one hand to draw it out, hoping, there has to be something, some magic there—
He kicks it out of her hand. She has just enough time to spot it snapping on the corner of the cupboards across the room before there’s a horrible pain—he’s grabbed her by the hair and dragging her through the oily black liquid, and mop dragging behind her and painting the untouched bits of wood like ink from a brush. With strength unlike anything Luna has ever displayed before, he hoists her up with one hand, reaching into the cupboard he had left open a minute before to grab for a silver potion’s knife—
And then it’s at her throat, the blade pressing against her skin—
“Look!” he snarls. “You think I won’t? How easy it would be to burn her alive as she chokes out on her own blood—a potions accident! Just like before! You would know.”
It’s not Ginny he’s snarling at, it’s—it has to be—“Luna!” she cries.
“Shut up!” he hisses in her ear, and once again his words seem to worm into her ear, and though Ginny opens her mouth to shout at Luna to fight it, to fight him, to take her body back from him no sound comes out out, because she doesn’t want to fight with Tom, she—yes she does, she—
He pulls tighter at her hair. “This is how things are now,” he says. “You want them to live? Fine. I won’t even do any lasting damage. But you are going to back off."
Ginny whimpers as the knife pushes a little closer to her chin, to that tender spot where he could just shove it up and—no! No, she—she has to do something. Luna can’t stop fighting. This isn’t what she—
But then he’s letting go, and she stumbles forward again, catching herself on the mop. “There, now,” he says behind her. She turns and looks at him over her shoulder, and he toys with the knife, a satisfied look on his face, though he still seems to glance around with certain paranoia. “We all get what we want. Xenophilius will be home soon, and then I will ask Daddy oh-so-nicely if he doesn’t want a bath after a hard day at work, and then I can borrow his wand, and things will be so much easier.” He meets Ginny’s eyes. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? An easy life? One where the things people say don’t hurt so much, where you’re happy and it is so easy? Then I’ll make it easy for you. I’m told, after all, that the Imperius Curse is quite comforting to be under. All your problems just seem to slip away. That’s what you want, isn’t it? All those things you go on and on complaining about gone, isn't that what you want?”
But Ginny’s hand tightens on the mop. “That’s not what I want at all!”
“No?” He laughs, and then his voice drops. “Then what about me, Ginny? All those hours pouring your heart out to me, were they lies? You made me think you loved me, Ginny. Was that a lie?”
She clenches her jaw. He’s doing it again, somehow—she doesn’t understand how he’s getting into her brain like this, but she—
“Yeah, maybe I loved you, Tom,” she says. “But that was before you did this to Luna, you—you git!”
And with everything she has, she grabs the mop and swings it up, crashing the other end into his face. It hits with a squelching slapping sound, and as the end of the mop leaves away it reveals Luna’s face, wide-eyed with rage, the oily black potion smeared across one side. This time, she doesn’t let him speak, as she swings back again from the other side:
“What I want is Luna back, and you back in that book where you belong!”
The mop connects with a crack, and Ginny must have put even more of her force into it because Luna’s head is slammed back into the cabinet. As the mop swings past, Luna’s body drops to the floor, the knife clattering down beside her. Ginny, heart pumping, sticks her foot out to pull it back and kick it away, and she brandishes the mop again, every cell in her body pounding with energy—with magic—because she knows he’s not going down without a fight—
But Luna’s body is completely still. Ginny frowns, grip tightening, waiting for something—He’s trying to trick her, to catch her off guard—her white and black-stained hair is blocking her face, and all the light is nearly gone—but, no. Nothing.
“Luna?” she hisses. No response. “Tom?”
Nothing.
A bit of black goop drips from the shelf of the cupboard her head had snapped back into, catching on the shelves one by one as it goes down, and finally landing on Luna’s bare arm. It slides right off, leaving a dark trail on her skin.
Ginny drops the mop, dropping to her knees, and grabs Luna’s shoulders, hauling her up— “Luna—no, come back to—you have to—”
Luna’s head lulls back, the hair falling away to reveal her face, completely vacant of expression. The blue eyes stare into hers, unseeing.
Behind Ginny, there’s a sudden clap, right as a chill goes through her. She looks back over her shoulder, pulling Luna closer to her chest, but aside from the fire, still flickering as the potion drips down the side of the cauldron, there’s no movement.
Then there’s movement in her hands.
Ginny turns slowly, her eyes locating the knife—too far—and the mop—too unwieldy. But she’s taller than Luna, and stronger, and even if it’s Tom, she can… she can…
“Ginny?” the quiet voice breathes from her arms. “What… happened?”