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artificialximagination · 9 years ago

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Pomegranate

For Pure Fandom’s fanfiction contest, I rewrote my Harry Potter oneshot Cinderella and Persephone into a 999-word short story titled Pomegranate. Nothing is changed, but a lot was cut and a few words tweaked so it feels like a different story in some ways. I decided to share it here. Note that the italics and bold went haywire, but it should be fixed! Apologies if it’s not.

Pomegranate

Tell me your favorite story, Ginny Weasley had written, all those years ago. Back when she'd been a naïve little first year.

It's an old Muggle myth, Tom Riddle had written back.

Tell me, she had pleaded.

The Dark Lord Hades ruled the Underworld. One day he was on his way to Olympus – home of the other Gods – and the Goddess of Love spotted him. She told her son, Cupid, to shoot an arrow at him, to make him fall in love. When the arrow pierced his heart, he looked around and saw a young spring goddess named Persephone. He fell in love with her, kidnapped her and took her to the Underworld with him. He offered his riches to her, but she still hated him for taking her away from her mother. He married her anyway, and made her his Queen.

Ginny waited, but he did not continue. Is that the end?

I don't remember the rest.

It's not very romantic, Ginny had written, and instantly regretted it. The tale probably wasn't supposed to be romantic.

But he loves her. He has been alone for a very long time; he has never been loved. Perhaps he's expressing his love in the only way he knows how. If it were you, would you hate him?

She had paused a moment, wondering how she would feel if she were Persephone. No. But I'd try to make him let me go.

And if he said he simply could not watch you leave?

I don't know. She had sighed. Why are you asking these questions?

Just curious.

Blinking the tears away, Ginny felt herself return to the present moment. She was in the abandoned kitchens, and the Battle of Hogwarts had just ended. Needing an escape from the choking misery in the Great Hall, she had taken refuge here, trying to ignore the empty shells of her former comrades that filled the corridors. She wasn’t certain what had caused those memories to swim across her eyes in that moment, but she was almost grateful for the temporary reprieve from reality.

Ginny noticed a bowl of fruit resting on a counter, one fruit bizarre and red. She picked up the fruit and tore it open. Starving, she consumed half its seeds before setting it back down again.

"Ginevra..." a voice reached her ears suddenly. Deep, cultured...beautiful.

Ginny glanced behind her, but saw nothing. How could she hear his voice, now? That voice had died many years before the body had. The beautiful voice had been replaced by a hideous, high hiss...

But why did she hear it now? "Maybe I'm going insane..." she muttered to herself. She wouldn't be surprised.

"You, Ginevra? Mad? Never," his voice scoffed. She spun around, and this time her eyes met a face. The only way he'd changed since the last she had seen him in the Chamber was that he was now...ghostly.

She reached for her wand, and was terrified to find that she'd left it in the Great Hall. "T-Tom?" Ginny stuttered, not believing what she was seeing. "You're-”

"Dead?" Tom Riddle smirked, walking up to her. Ginny wanted to get away, but her legs felt weak. “Yes, I know. I wouldn't be a ghost otherwise."

"But shouldn't you be..."

"Lord Voldemort?" He laughed. "Now that I am dead all of my soul has been put back together. I'm no longer the...ah, reptilian creature I was."

"But why are you here?"

“Unfinished business. Did you ever have a chance to finish that story I started for you all those years ago?" She shook her head. “Shall I tell you the end of it?"

"Go ahead," she said, stalling him. Maybe someone would think to feed the exhausted army, and the house elves would return.

"You remember where we left off?" Ginny nodded. He smiled. "Hades made Persephone his Queen. On Earth, Demeter – her mother – was very angry. She threatened to freeze the Earth unless Persephone was returned to her. Zeus – King of the Gods – ordered Hades to return Persephone. But of course, Hades couldn't let his wife go. So...he gave her a pomegranate – that fruit you were eating earlier. You see, in the Underworld there was a law, that anyone who ate of something grown and harvested there must live there. She ate six seeds. Zeus decided that she would return with her mother, but for six months of the year she would be with her husband. That is why there is winter. Her mother grieves every month her daughter is, essentially, dead."

Ginny’s heart raced. Dead. Because of a pomegranate.

"Did you know,” he continued, "That pomegranate is used in a number of potions...and poisons? So is aconite, a poisonous plant." She heard Tom's voice speaking to her, but it seemed so distant. "You should be feeling the effects soon..."

Ginny rushed to the sink and tried to force herself to vomit by sticking her scarlet juice-stained fingers deep into her mouth.

"It's too late for that, Ginevra...the poison is already in your system." She heard him approaching behind her. "If you relax, it won't hurt so much."

Ginny spun around, blinded with anger. She charged Tom, but went straight through him. She collapsed onto the floor, and could hear him laughing at her. She began to shake uncontrollably, and she felt like she was on fire.

A fever, some rational part of her mind explained. Extreme poisoning caused fevers, as well as the shaking and the sudden extreme thirst she was beginning to feel.

Ginny felt her strength quickly disappearing, no matter how hard she fought against it.

"Harry will...Harry will..." she couldn't finish.

"Harry will what?" he spat. "I'm already dead!"

Ginny felt tears running down her face. She was going to die at the hands of a ghost. She could feel herself weakening. She had strength enough for only one last word.

"Why?" she choked out.

"Because," Tom Riddle answered, "I was not going to go to the Underworld without my Queen."

#artificialimagination #aihp #cinderella and persephone #pomegranate #fic update

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artificialimaginationxo · 13 years ago

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SHADOWS - Chapter One: Death and the Lady (Harry Potter)

She has heard a whisper.

The war has ended in the Wizarding world, but not inside of Ginevra Weasley. Grieving her lost brother and destroyed family, she has yet another thing haunting her – she hears Tom Riddle’s voice in her head. Is she going mad, or is he real? And if he is real…what, exactly, does he want from her?

A post-DH, dark Tom/Ginny fanfiction involving madness, manipulation and poetry.

“So Ginny poured her soul out to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted…I grew stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasely. Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasely a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her…”

- Tom Riddle, Chamber of Secrets

AFTER THE FINAL BATTLE

Nothing.

Silence.

Emptiness.

It was not dark or light.

There was no hot, there was no cold.

There was no life, there was no death.

There was no joy, there was no suffering.

There was no being, there was no thinking, there was no feeling, and there was no speaking.

Purely nothing.

But, slowly, something formed.

He.

He could not feel a physical body. There was no heart beating, no breath drawn. He was mist.

But he could think.

This was familiar.

He’d died, and he’d returned. This had happened before.

But before, he did not feel so much.

Before he’d felt anger and hatred and the longing for life and revenge.

But now…

He still longed for life. He still felt hatred and anger. He still wanted revenge.

But what was this other, warm and painful thing?

Before he had a chance to explore it, he heard. This, also, was unfamiliar in this state. Last time it had taken ages to use senses.

But now he heard a soft sighing. A girl crying. A familiar girl.

And now, thinking of her, he saw her. Not with eyes, but with his thoughts.

The soft skin. The red hair. Her eyes were closed, and she lay across something. A corpse.

Not his.

A sharp pain, though he had no body to feel with.

None of this was familiar.

What is this? His thoughts hissed.

The girl looked up suddenly, pale, looking about herself in a panic.

She had heard him.

None of this was familiar.

But – perhaps – he could use it to his advantage.

“I am half sick of shadows,” said

The Lady of Shalott.

- Tennyson

A YEAR LATER

"'I am half sick of shadows'," Ginny quoted as she watched smoke curl in the moonlight. The candle below the silver air had almost burnt out, though it still gave out the faint scent of wine and roses. She loved the romantic scent. It almost replaced the lack of romance in her life.

It wasn't that she was unhappy with Harry – quite the opposite. She loved him. He loved her. They made each other happy. They had talked of marriage often, though they were both still young. They dreamed of a small house in the country, with a white fence and a small garden, and two or three children running about, playing happily as they watched on.

But reality was always in the way of their dreams.

After the final battle, everyone wanted time with Harry Potter. The Daily Prophet, the Ministry, the aurors. He had spent the year in a whirlwind of advice, pleas, offers and interviews. She barely saw him at all, which made becoming engaged difficult. She waited patiently, though. She knew that things would settle down in the near future, and that future would be worth the difficulty of the present.

Things were, indeed, difficult for her. Fred's death and shaken her family. Their close ties threatened to break apart, even with the return of the prodigal son. George wouldn't speak to Percy at all, which wounded Percy's pride. He also wasn't getting along with Bill or Charlie, since they still blamed him for making their family miserable for so long. The oldest siblings both led separate lives far away, anyway, and didn't spend any time at home. Percy threatened often to leave again, and to only ever write to their parents and to Ginny.

Other then problems of the heart and her family, Ginny was having…mental problems, as well.

Often, out of the corner of her eye, she would see a shadow of Tom Riddle. Not of the reptilian Lord Voldemort, but the young, charming and handsome man she'd written to in a diary so many years ago. Sometimes she could even swear that she heard his voice.

At first, she'd blamed it on grief. Fred was gone, and Lord Voldemort dead. Though she hadn't cared for the Dark wizard, really, she had cared for the illusion she once had of him. She thought that perhaps that was why her mind would create his voice in her head, speaking words that rarely made sense to her.

But it had been a year now, and still sometimes she would hear a whisper.

"'She has heard a whisper say: a curse is on her if she stay to look down to Camelot'," she quoted again, and then leaned forward to blow the candle out. That's what she heard whispered to her often. Not about Camelot, but about her hopes for a life with Harry, and about her dreams that one day she would wake and her family would be healed from the wounds caused by the war. The whisper would tell her that she would only be miserable with Harry, that it was impossible that her family would ever be the same again. That she was cursed to always live in misery if she stayed there, waiting for things that might not ever be. It told her how like the Lady of Shalott she was, meant only to see such hopes as reflections…never as reality.

Ginny had never told anyone about this voice. Not Harry or her family or even her best friends Hermione and Luna. She knew they wouldn't understand. Well, Luna might. But it didn't matter, because she honestly believed there was nothing that could be done. She had tried what she could, spells and potions she thought would be safe for her to try…but nothing had worked. Nothing ever stopped the whispers or the shadows. Maybe it was something she would have to learn to live with for the rest of her life. That thought terrified her.

Standing from her place beside the window, she slowly walked to her bed and pulled back the sheets. She was very tired; reflecting on her grief, fear and misery always made her tired.

She slipped her small feet under the warm blankets and made sure her wand was on the table beside the bed. Reassured, she rested her head against her soft pillows. As she drifted to sleep, she heard a whisper say:

I have always pictured Persephone with red hair.

The mirror crack’d from side to side;

“The curse has come upon me,” cried

The Lady of Shalott.

- Tennyson

In the morning, she woke to see her mirror cracked from side to side.

"I can't be the Lady of Shalott," she murmured to herself. "She was cursed to remain in her room, weaving, and it was only if she looked at reality – if she looked away from her mirror to see the real world instead of it's reflection – that she died…" What of that was not her? Was she not cursed to wait in her room, seeing mere reflections of the reality she longed for? "If I see my dreams come true, become real…I will not die."

Death is not the loss of a body, but the loss of the ability to live.

Ginny shook her head, slipping out of bed and getting to her feet. She picked up her wand, and looked into the broken mirror.

"I am not the Lady of Shalott," she told her cracked reflection, ignoring the shadow behind her. "I am Ginny Weasely."

And she was insane.

#artificialimagination #fanfic #ginny weasely #glorasun #harry potter #hp #shadows #tom riddle #tom/ginny #write #fanfiction #writing

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