The light in the room was bright and hard.  Each of the candles seemed to have impossibly large flames on them, and they all danced with the movements of the girl's fiery hair as she whipped around, firing spells at what he imagined were invisible Harry Potters.

            Draco could have sighed with relief.  It had taken him nearly half an hour to find her.  He'd combed through the entire house room by room when she wasn't in the room with the nonexistent doorway as he'd expected her to be.  Finding that room alone had taken a good ten minutes, not to mention a few wrong turns into what were actually solid walls.  Thankfully, no one else had been around, or he would have been forced to Avada Kedavra them.  He was also secretly relieved that she was not crying and did not appear to be sad.  She appeared to be quite furious, and anger, at least, he thought he knew what to do with.

            He stepped through the doorway and leaned against its frame, idly fingering the doorjamb as her words suddenly assailed his ears.  So she had perfected the containing spell he'd shown her.  It was a useful spell, one used at Hogwarts to contain most magic within the classrooms and sound within the common rooms, though at Hogwarts it had been worked into the very foundation of the building somehow.

            "Miserable, know it all, bloody, buggering wanker!"  Ginny screeched as she hurled a curse across the room.  It rebounded off a tapestry, and she cast a complicated looking shield spell.  He watched as the neon yellow tail of the curse shimmered around the edges of her shield, which pulsed emerald green where the curse dissipated against it.

            Draco smirked.  He had shown her that curse too.  It was a Sixth year spell, the trio knew it as well, but he had taught it to her.  She performed it flawlessly, and he took pride in her success with it.

            "Self-important, two-faced prat!"

            She shot off another curse, and had Draco been any less observant, he wouldn't have been able to sidestep it as neatly as he had.  He also would have failed to realize that he'd suddenly, quite unintentionally, provided her a worthy target.

            "You forgot four-eyed freak of nature."  He casually flicked away a hex from her wand as if it were a gnat.

            She screeched something incoherent - and probably vulgar - at him, but he didn't have time to ponder it, as his eye caught the flames of the candles.  The turning of the world seemed to slow as the flames leapt from their candles and swirled through the air towards him.  Draco did the only rational thing he could come up with at the given moment.

            He hit the deck.

            The flames from the candles, now resembling something akin to a fiery lightning bolt, tore through the containing barrier she had spelled upon the doorway and zipped down the hall.  Draco pushed himself up, intent on chewing the redhead up one side and down the other.

            "Damn it!  Accio!"

            And he was back on the floor, just barely dodging being set aflame for the second time in as many seconds.  When he'd re-steeled his nerves and thought it might be safe, or as close to safe as he could apparently expect to be when she was so brassed off, he rolled back up into a sitting position.  "Now where the devil did you learn to do that?"

            "Don't know.  Is there something I can help you with, or will you be seeing yourself out now?"

            The air crackled with pent up energy and her magic.  She looked on the verge of exploding.  She looked beautiful.  Beautiful and full of life - and everything it contained.  It nearly drove him to distraction.

            "Make me."

            It certainly seemed to drive the vast majority of sense out of his head.  He didn't care.  He suddenly wanted everything dancing behind those eyes directed at him.  Anger, violence, happiness, laughter, maybe even hurt - though he didn't intend to intentionally put that in her eyes ever again - everything and anything except emptiness.  He'd had enough of emptiness.  He wanted to learn how to speak with his eyes like that.  He envied it.

            "Go on then, I dare you," he goaded, sneer firmly in place, when she didn't acknowledge him.

            That was all it took.  Ginny began hurling hexes at him so quickly he was certain she was starting the next curse nonverbally even as she finished saying the first one.  They were simple, elementary curses and hexes, and he deflected them easily enough, impressed that even at lightning speed her aim was impeccable.

            He intended only to defend himself, but before long, he was retaliating to her constant attacks.  Ginny eventually did slow her rapid-fire hexes, but only so she could properly cast the more difficult ones.  Neither noticed when the curses slid from mostly harmless to somewhat dangerous or from somewhat dangerous to possibly deadly.  Nor did they notice when their battle changed from a venting of frustration to a battle of wits to fighting with their inner demons.  Within minutes, they were waging a full, no holds barred war upon each other.

            The curious thing was, they weren't fighting each other at all.

            Draco dodged spell after spell and called out his own hexes and curses along the way, but all the while, he kept half an eye on the flames.  If she didn't know how she'd managed to set them after him, there was no guarantee she wouldn't do it again, or that she could control it at all.

            Ginny dove out of the way as a purple curse streaked towards her, tucked her head, and rolled neatly back onto her feet, shouting a curse that sounded too familiar for Draco's comfort.

            But it was then that Draco saw his chance.  "Acerbitas memorite!" he cried as she took the tiniest of moments to be proud of herself for - finally - executing that roll Tonks had shown her right.

            The flames jumped above their candles, and Draco turned his attention to them.  He forgot, totally, completely, and rather stupidly, about the curse she'd hurled his way not seconds before.

            Pain short of nothing but the Cruciatus, and only by a little there, racked Draco's body, and he staggered backwards a good three or four steps in surprise as he vividly recalled the familiar sounding spell.  Only Death Eaters knew that spell.

            Ginny watched the effect of her curse in horror, entirely oblivious to the spell he had sent her way just before he was struck.  She shrieked as it hit her and constricted around her heart, dropping to the floor as it started to take effect.

            "I always wanted to be Ginny Weasley," Luna's voice reverberated in her head.

            By the time Draco shook off the remnants of her curse, she was whimpering and shaking where she'd landed.  He crossed the room slowly and dropped to a crouch before her, then reached out to touch her arm.  Damn his stupidity.  What had he been thinking, using that spell?

            Ginny shrank away from his touch.  "No more, please don't make me do it any more, Tom," she pled to Draco, staring at him with unseeing eyes.

            Draco shot to his feet.  "Stop it."  He toed the back of her legs.

            Yes, it was lame, and incredibly insensitive to boot, but it was all he had come up with given the current situation.  Aside from that, the way she'd withdrawn from his touch had rattled him to the core.  She'd never - not even when they were adversaries - pulled away from him.

            "Please."  She shivered again.  Then she curled up into a ball and wrapped her arms tightly around her.  The light from the candles and lamps in the room disappeared as neatly as if she had used a Putter-Outer.

            If he hadn't known better, if he hadn't seen the flames of the candles rapidly shrink to nothing when she'd drawn her arms into her, he would have thought she'd tossed some of those miscreants' Peruvian Darkness Powder in the air just to throw him off.

            Shit.  Shit, shit, shit.  Why did these sorts of things always happen to him?  He hadn't known she would react that severely to a memory curse.  All right, fine, a painful memory curse.  Yes, there was the whole thing with Luna, but he didn't react that badly to the memory curse, and he'd been the one to carry the dead girl out of the Riddle House.

            Draco started to pace.  He couldn't just leave her - not in the darkness when he couldn't even get a Lumos off his wand.  No, not in the darkness, and especially not alone in it.  Sweet Salazar.  There was no telling what they'd do to him if they found her alone like this.  If he was there, at least he would have a chance to explain his half of the story.

            Or at least, he liked to hope so.

            When he turned the corner to begin his trek back towards her, he stubbed his toe on the couch.  He cursed fluently in several different languages as he hopped about on one foot, babying the injured toe.  Perfect.  Now he sounded like the Weasel King - albeit a well cultured Weasel King.

            This, this was all her fault.  He hadn't ever had issues about leaving someone alone in the dark before, especially if they would sooner hex him than look at him when the curse wore off.

            "If she didn't go around acting like Mary fucking Sunshine all the damn time," he ranted, only to be cut off by the light returning to the room so quickly he was temporarily struck blind.

            And in that split second he couldn't see, she swept his legs out from under him.  He landed flat on his back with the wind knocked out of him, and his eyes were still shut from the blinding light when she threw herself on him and pushed her wand into his neck.

            "What the Hell did you do to me!" she demanded, pushing her wand in a little harder for emphasis.

            "How do you know Pervellous Accendium?" he countered between undignified wheezes.

            "You are not in a good position to be a smart arse, Ferret."

            It was a stupid move; she realized that before she'd even finished the comment.  She should have put a Body Bind on him before she went running off at the mouth.  Ginny felt him moving and twisting under her, but there was nothing she could do to stop what was coming.

            Even if she had been capable of stopping it, Ginny wasn't entirely sure she would have.  Because he'd done some kind of complicated turn underneath her and now they were both sitting, but she was held tight to him.  It would have felt safe, and might have been sexy, if it weren't for the wand digging into the soft spot between her jawbone and neck muscle.

            And damn it all if she didn't find that sexy too.

            Knowing she'd been outmaneuvered, for the time being, Ginny resigned herself to the inevitable.  "Truce?"

            He removed his wand from her neck, but she was reluctant to scoot away from him.  He was solid, real, and after her encounter - even if it was only in her mind - with Tom, she needed that.  She needed him.

            Ginny was surprised to find that it was not an entirely repulsive thought.  In fact, she rather liked it.  She could never need Harry.  He always had far too much to deal with - not that that was entirely his fault - to have her need him as well.  She wanted someone who could anchor her as much as she anchored him.  To be able to need as much as she was needed.

            Draco's wand arm moving to join his other arm loosely around her waist broke her out of her thoughts.  She remembered her daydream from the kitchen then, and she did lean back into him this time.  A wide smile stole across her face as his arms reflexively tightened a bit about her middle.

            "I go first," Draco said. 

He must have felt her shift in his arms, because the moment she started to open her mouth, he cut her off.  "You called Uncle, I go first."

            "I did not call Uncle," Ginny replied, indignant.  "I suggested a truce."

            "Big difference."  Draco rolled his eyes.  She started to move away from him, out from between his legs and away from his chest, and Draco panicked.  He tightened his hold on her waist, once again purposely preventing her from moving, even as he readied himself to be assaulted for his reaction.

            Ginny only dropped her hands down to his, though, and she gave them a tiny squeeze as she removed them from her waist.  She scooted across the floor, and then turned to face him.  "I just wanted to see your face."  She gave a little shrug and one of those unsure smiles that seemed to have formed a noose around his heart.

            "Go on, you wanted to go first."  She bumped his knee with her own to prod him into responding.

            "Err, right.  Right."  He shook his head as if it would shake his thoughts into order.  "How do you know Pervellous Accendium?"

            Crap.  She was caught.  An overwhelming feeling of panic seemed to fill her body at the thought of having to explain everything to him, and Ginny decided to bluff.  "Everyone who's ever taken lessons from an Auror knows it."  She was surprised to see Draco's face fall, just a tiny fraction, before he restored the careful indifference.

            She lied to him. 

Surely she knew that he knew about the spell, why it was so unusual that she would know it.  Why would she lie?  Bold as brass, right to his face.  However, he couldn't deny that she had gall.

            "Don't lie.  You aren't training with an Auror regularly, in the first place, and no, they don't in the second.  Only Death Eaters know that spell."

            Ginny squirmed at the tone of his voice.  It wasn't accusatory, like Harry's would have been.  Instead, it was disappointed. 

It shamed her.

            "Or you're misinformed," she lashed out at him - anything to avoid having to explain what she'd done.  "As per usual."  She tried his sneer when his eyes flashed at the insult.  She really rather liked the sneer, she decided as his eyes narrowed further upon realizing her expression.

            "Or you're lying.  But what could you be so secretive about?  Is the Gryff Princess a spy?" he taunted.  "Fancy having a go with the upper class?  When you get past all the Muggle-loving and poverty, the Weasleys are as pure as the rest of us."

            "As if I would be silly enough to put my family name in such a position," she brushed him off airily.  "For all the talk of purity, you're as dirty as any Mudblood now.  Most of your ilk have managed to breed the magic right out of themselves.  Besides, no one in their right mind will ever trust the Malfoy name to power again."

            Ginny couldn't contain her half smile at the look on his face.  She'd successfully derailed the conversation.  Never mind the aching feeling in her heart; she could deal with that later, as long as she didn't have to -

            "A matter of opinion," Draco gritted out.  "But that doesn't change the fact that only Death Eaters know that spell.  The Dark Lord has made sure of that.  Even then, most of those in the higher circle can't do it.  So how do you pull it off?  Let's pretend that you had stumbled across it on accident.  How do you know the wand motions for it?  How do you manage to perform it to its fullest extent?"

            Ginny glared at him.  Why couldn't he ever just let her win?  Even just once?  "It's a long story.  My turn."

            "I don't think so.  You haven't answered my question."

            "I will, but I want you to answer mine first."  If she could not derail the conversation, then she would stall it as long as possible.  "What the hell did you do to me?"

            "Acerbitas Memorite," he replied, decided to humor her.

            "And that means?"

            "Roughly, it translates painful by heart or from memory.  In effect, it makes you relieve your worst memory."  Draco gave her a doleful look, almost as if by way of apology.

            "You bastard.  What is wrong with you?"  Ginny glared at him.  As if having him pull her out of her nightmares wasn't bad enough.  Once he knew she had them, he used them against her.

            "I wouldn't have used it if I had a clue you'd ever had more than one bad day in your life," he snapped.  "And who in the hell is Tom?"

            Ginny ignored his question all together.  "A clue?  A clue?  You've had dozens of clues!  I told you myself - you don't know anything about me.  Harry told you today in the library!  So don't give me that crap."

            "Well how was I to know it was that bad?  What the fuck could have possibly happened to make you react to it that severely?"

            "You mean other than the time my best friend sacrificed herself for me, and I watched Death Eaters drag her off to her death?  You do realize this is going to be about someone other than you, right?"

            "I asked, didn't I?"  He chose to ignore the last slight.

            "Fine.  You remember when the Chamber of Secrets opened?  Everyone thought it was Harry, then Hagrid, a few thought it was you - you were the Prince of Slytherin and all.  They were all a million miles off."

            "You're not saying it was you?" he asked, almost managing not to laugh at the absurdity of her implication.  "That's ridiculous.  How could you open the Chamber?  You don't even have any blood ties to Slytherin."

            "Would that it were blood ties to Slytherin.  Would that it were," she said, more to herself than to him.  She stared at the floor for a long while before finally meeting his eyes.  "I didn't have to have blood ties to Slytherin.  I had his heir, in the form of a diary that your father slipped into my book pile at Flourish and Blotts."

            She was speaking so softly by the end of the sentence that Draco had to strain to hear her.  He scooted closer, and when he didn't protest his father's guilt in the incident, she continued.

            "I wrote in it all summer.  When it wrote back, I was surprised.  But it was nice, having someone to take me seriously for once.  That's why I kept writing.

            "I was so stupid!" she shouted, burying her face in her hands.  "How many times had Da told us, 'If you can't see where it keeps its brain...'" she trailed off, blushing at her outburst.

            "I wrote and wrote, and it sounds trite, I know, but I poured my stupid, twelve year old soul into that book.  At first, it was fine - he was actually pleasant.  And he was so studied and charming; I was flattered that he thought I was worth the attention.  But the more I wrote, the more vengeance and hate filled his replies.  Even his compliments were backhanded, come to think of it."

            She paused, and Draco took a moment to think aloud.  "So the diary was the Horcrux Potter was talking about it.  The more you wrote, used it - needed it - the more power you gave it."

            Ginny nodded sullenly.

            Something clicked at her miserable nod, and Draco looked horrified.  "The more power you gave it, the more power it had to hold over you."

            "Yes," she whispered.  "Soon I was sneaking around, knowing I was doing something I shouldn't be, but I couldn't make myself stop.  I would write about it, and he would tell me that we all have urges we just can't resist.  That I should tell him about them, and maybe he could help me.  Of course, he was mocking me; it was him the whole time.  After that, I would wake up and not be able to remember what had happened during the day.  The last thing I would remember was eating breakfast, but I would find myself in the dorm room studying.  Once I woke up in bed covered in red paint.  I think I might have fainted when I saw it.  I was sure it was blood."

            "So he possessed you, took you down into the Chamber."

            "There were a few other things between there, but yes.  He possessed me, I opened the Chamber again, and when we were down there he..."  Ginny trailed off, unable to find the right words.

            Horrible thoughts instantly filled Draco's mind.  Everyone knew how powerful blood magic was, and the strongest blood was that from the virgin.  If the Dark Lord had found a way to utilize it, they could be dealing with a whole new kind of monster.  "He didn't -"

            Realization flashed across Ginny's face as she grasped onto his train of thought.  "Oh!  No!  Not that."  She shuddered.  "I just didn't know how to describe it.  He came out of the diary, and he was there.  Like a ghost, only in color.  He was young and handsome, charismatic - so charismatic.  I could see why people would be entranced by him.  But he was so evil.  I could see it in his eyes - even before he was ... solid."  She gave an involuntary shiver.  "He said a spell, and it was like he was pulling the life out of me.  Like when you pull a thought for the Penseive."

            "But what has that got to do with you knowing that spell?"

            Ginny shrugged.  "He created it.  Before he made the diary a Horcrux, before he was even a Seventh year.  He wanted to be able to cause pain without being tracked by the Ministry for using an Unforgivable."  Her eyes widened at the thought.  She still couldn't quite wrap her head around the idea that a boy younger than they were could have been so evil.

            "Merlin," Draco said, rubbing his hands over his eyes then massaging his temples.  "He could do that when he was sixteen then.  Not even all the members in the High Circle can do it.  Most of the ones who can don't manage it as well as you."

            "Sorry," she interrupted.

            He waved her apology off, still puzzling it together aloud.  "The Cruciatus hurts the same no matter the caster - so long as they're feeling particularly hateful - that's what makes it unforgivable, it's employed only by hate.  But even when the castor isn't comfortable with hate, or say it's emotional - like rage, it's not how much the spell hurts that changes, it's how long it lasts.  Pervellous though, the intent is different -"

Ginny cocked her head to the side.  "How?  It does the same thing.  It causes pain."

Draco shook his head.  "No.  It's not fueled from the same place.  I can see why it works now - Pervellus comes from somewhere logical, it can be monitored and adjusted by the castor.  He can make you feel anything from a pinch to burning with pain.  It can be tempered at the will of the castor, and like other jinxes, it can be cancelled with a counterjinx or Finite.  Do you see?"

"If that's true, then why did mine nearly knock you off your feet when I didn't mean to -"

"But that's just it - you didn't give it any direction at all.  You didn't know you were required to.  You shouted it at me in the midst of a duel, your enthusiasm gave it all the information it had to go on.  So it went."

Ginny looked at him doubtfully.  "I guess that makes sense.  All I know is that Tom made it, and that alone should have told me it was a bad idea to use it.  But what I don't understand is why I knew the spell, knew how to cast it, but not the particulars -"

"Hang on - you knew it because he knew it?"

            "I know a lot of things I shouldn't.  It's like whatever he knew before he made that Horcrux, I know.  The things he learned later are a little different.  Like a flash of déjà vu or something - even though he's not in my head anymore.  When Harry destroyed the diary, all the life he'd stolen went shooting back into me.  The best I can figure, it was such a violent recollection of my essence that it yanked some of his out along with it."

            Draco was giving her an odd look.

            "You can't tell anyone," Ginny said quickly.  "No one else needs to know about me knowing more than I should.  Hermione knows, and Harry too, but no one else - especially my mum - need know."

            "All right then," Draco agreed.  "No one else, but I get another question for my silence."

            Ginny tried not to roll her eyes.  Only a Malfoy would request that his silence be bought in the middle of such a heart baring conversation.  "Fine."

            "Who's Tom?"  He had meant to ask again about the candles, but the only thing on his mind was Tom - whoever he was.  And Draco needed to find that out so he could kill the sorry bastard for whatever he had had to do with the diary mess.

            Ginny was too shocked even to scoff at Draco's question.  She cocked her head to the side and studied him before coming to the conclusion that he really didn't know.

            "Potter said that the diary was a Horcrux, so obviously that was Lord Voldemort's, but who's this Tom fellow, and what did he have to do with any of it?"

            Draco frowned as she continued to stare at him.  He didn't like being so utterly confused.  Not at all.  It destroyed his illusion that he knew everything, and that - on top of everything else - might have proved to be more than he could handle. 

"Now look here -"

            Ginny, meanwhile, had decided that showing him would be the best answer to his question.  She picked up her wand, held it loosely in her hand, and concentrated.  He watched her eyebrows knit together as the writing came out of the wand.  "TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE"

            Riddle?  That was the house where they met.  That was where Voldemort regained his body, but what -

            She flicked her wrist, and the red letters hanging in the air slithered their way around, rearranging, shifting, just like they had in the Chamber when he'd come out of the diary and laughed in her face.  He had done it when Harry was there too, when he had come to save her.  It was a favorite trick of Tom's.  Finally, they were still again.  "I AM LORD VOLDEMORT."

            Draco and Ginny stared silently at the letters for a long time before Ginny finally spoke.  "His name wasn't always Voldemort, you know."

            The anagram only brought more questions to Draco's mind.  "But, but the Riddle house is a Muggle house.  There aren't any pureblood Riddles."

            "I know."