Fic: The Linnet Born Within the Cage (Tom/Ginny, Harry/Ginny)
Title: The Linnet Born Within the Cage
Author: inkpuddle
Recipient: velsy
Rating: NC17
Pairing(s): Tom/Ginny, Ginny/Harry
Author’s Note: Be warned: this is dark. Perhaps not as dark as other fics, but it definitely qualifies. The title is taken from Tennyson’s “In Memoriam.”



Ginny shifts restlessly in her bed, shadows drifting through the room and brushing her lips as they slide by her, sliding through the folds in the sheets and rising goosebumps on her skin as they pass. She curls in on herself, burrowing deeper beneath blankets, trying to hide from the shadows that linger around her bed. From the other beds in the room, soft snores and the sound of bodies shifting languidly in sleep issue. The sounds slowly fade, leaving the room in almost complete silence. Ginny shifts again, her lashes fluttering, although she remains asleep.

Her dreams are filled with those shadows, sliding through the coils of her mind and sifting through memories and dreams, digging through layers of years and hurts and joys. She dreams of boys who kiss her chastely on the cheek, boys who eye her in the corridors but never approach, and boys who whisper dark promises in her ear and come to her in dreams and lick the chicken blood off her fingers and then kiss her child’s mouth, sharing the taste of copper and power.

It is the last boy who she dreams about the most. Sometimes they are only memories, and she wakes up with a scream trapped in her throat. And sometimes she wakes with a whimper, her body flushed and warm, her body slick and wet with need that a dream could never sate. It is on those nights that she creeps down the hall into the boys’ dormitory and crawls into Harry’s bed, casting silencing spells as she wakes Harry with her mouth on his cock and a quick, nearly silent fuck in the blackness of the room, mere feet away from where her brother sleeps.

It is on those days after she dreams of Tom and fucks Harry in his stead that Harry will never look at her at the breakfast table. Sometimes she is darkly amused at his innocence and sense of propriety, and sometimes she mourns that she cannot feel those things anymore. She sometimes wonders if she should leave Harry alone—leave him to his lonely bed, stop fucking a boy while envisioning the man who would like to kill him, but then Tom comes to her in dreams again and she wakes with that terrible need crawling through her body that only Harry’s cock can sate.

But now Ginny falls deeper into that velvet darkness, feels it caress cold skin and sluggish heart, and she feels a thrill of guilty excitement thrill her blood as she realizes that Tom is calling to her again. Tom will be in her dreams tonight, touching her, his mouth on her body, the cruel scrape of teeth over sensitive skin.

“You’re eager tonight, ma belle.” His voice is dark and delicious—the voice of the man he is to become rather than the rather slender boy that takes her hand to raise her to stand on her feet. She wants to kiss his mouth and savor that delicious voice—roll it on her tongue like candy, the same way that he sipped power from her five years ago.

She dimly notices that they are in the Chamber of Secrets again—it is one of his favorite places to show her in her dreams—but doesn’t care. The first time that he brought her here in her dreams, she panicked; he had simply seized her and pressed her to the cold stone, fucking her while she writhed beneath him, her hot tears dripping on the cold stone in a mixture of agonizing pleasure and fright.

That was the first night that she had gone to Harry.

Now Tom steps toward her, his hand rising like a pale lamp in the almost-dark to brush her hair away from her shoulder. She shivers involuntarily, because Tom’s hands are always cold. “I’m not eager,” she says defiantly, tilting her chin up to meet his gaze. She is no longer an eleven year old, and he is only a head taller than she. “I don’t even want you.”

“Oh really?” he said softly, silkily, in a way that makes her shiver and has nothing to do with his cold hands. “You say that you don’t want me?”

“Yes,” she retorts, but she is sure that he can feel her tremble, as he leisurely strokes a finger over her pale collarbone and the slim bones in her shoulder.

“You don’t feel like you don’t want me,” he whispers, lowering his head to nip at her neck in rebuke. She can’t help the fact that her head falls back in submission, or the breathless whisper--“I don’t want you, Tom.”

“You are such a contrary creature,” he whispers, his breath warm on the fragile skin of her throat as he brushes his lips along its column and up to her ear. “It is one of the things that most endears you to me, Ginevra. I do so love making you beg to be fucked.”

A breathless little whimper escapes, and her hand rises to his chest, as if to push him away. But then his hands are bunching in her faded nightgown and ripping it over her head, leaving her body bare in the chill air. His teeth and lips attack her throat, leaving rising red marks on the fair skin as he nips and kisses and presses sharp teeth against the pulse hammering there. She jerks convulsively when he lowers her to the cold stone floor, her body instinctively arching up away from the stone and toward him.

“Yes,” he hisses, his dark eyes glittering like black stars in his face. She stares up at his eyes, fascinated by the way that they look. There is flame in them, fire and passion and ambition. Sometimes she wonders why people think Tom is a simple villain with the simple desire to eradicate Muggle-borns—perhaps she is the only one who can see the driving need for power and the way that it affects him.

His hands slide over her stomach, and she sucks in a breath at the chill he leaves behind. But then they slide up to her breasts, fondling them with his slender fingers that are perpetually ink-stained. He leans over her and takes one upright nipple into his mouth, swiping it with his tongue and making her cry out, the sound echoing back to her from the merciless stone around her.

As his mouth works at her breast, his hands part her legs and he slips a finger into her, his thumb rubbing her clit. She trembles violently, her hands fisting in his hair and her body bowed like a bow as the pleasure rushes through her stomach and through her body. “Tom,” she moans, her hips lifting toward him helplessly, her hands sliding away from him to curl into fists as she presses them against the floor, frantic gasps bursting from her mouth.

A low whine starts in her throat, and her hips move more quickly as he bites down on her breast and moves his finger more quickly. “Tom,” she moans again, “Oh God—Tom—“

“Come,” he whispers against her breastbone, and her body arches in a beautiful curve and she lets out a trembling cry that fills the room, her body clamping down on Tom’s fingers. She falls back against the stone with a gasp, her legs lying open loosely, her chest heaving.

Tom lifts his head, his mouth still its customary hard line, and stares at her with those burning eyes. “You still do not want me, ma belle?”

“No,” she gasps. “I don’t want you, Tom.”

He slides down her body, leaving trailing kisses in his wake, and settles between her thighs. He traces that junction with one finger, feeling how slick she is from her release. Then he touches his tongue to her, and she jerks wildly, a cry torn violently from her throat. He drives her mercilessly, his tongue gentle at first, licking sedately, listening to her slow gasps. Then he punishes with teeth and tongue, tongue thrusting into her body in a mockery of what he could do to her with his body.

When he feels her start to get close to release, he lifts his head and stares up her body at her. She lifts her head, her hair in a damp tangle around her face, her eyes near-wild. “What are you doing?” she gasps.

He sits back on his heels and sheds his shirt, watching her closely. Her breath quickens, knowing what is coming. He pulls his trousers off, then crawls up her body. “I think I should leave you like this, ma belle,” he whispers cruelly. “On fire for me, so close…”

“No,” she whimpers. “No, Tom, no. Please—“

“Please what?” he whispers, his lips curving into a cruel smile. “You know how I like to hear you beg, little firebird.” He lowers his head and licks her lower lip slowly. She opens her mouth to his instantly, and he kisses her slowly, his prick pressed against her but not entering. She lifts her hips toward his, but whimpers when he moves slightly away.

“Please, Tom,” she begs. “Please fuck me.”

“Say pretty please,” he whispers in a sing-song voice, brushing his lips over her cheek to her ear. His hands trail over her arms, teasing her with light touches. He laughs, and there is something sinful and mocking in it. “Offer me everything,” he hisses in her ear, biting at her earlobe with barely restrained ferocity. “Offer to give me Harry Potter, little traitor. Would you betray him for me? For a quick fuck, would you give up everything?”

“Tom—“ she sobs, “Tom, why are you doing this?”

“You know what I want!” he hisses. “Say it, little traitor. You know you want to. Those words are just behind those lying lips of yours. Whisper them in my ear. I want to hear them as I fuck you.” He pushes slightly into her, then back, making her clutch convulsively at him.

“Will you not say them?” he whispers teasingly, pushing forward again only to remove himself.

“Yes!” she cries, her nails digging into his back. She dimly feels the blood well from the marks and stain her fingers. “Yes—Tom—I’ll do anything. Please, God, anything!”

“Even give me Harry Potter?” he whispers, his breath warm on her earlobe.

“Yes,” she whispers, her head falling back against the stone in defeat. “Yes, even that.”

He pushes into her in a hard rush, bowing her spine and dragging a sob from her throat. He bares his teeth as he fucks her mercilessly. She sobs, long cries of pleasure ripped from that dark part of her that doesn’t care about Harry or her family or what the world would think of her for fucking Tom Riddle, even in her dreams. For this one instant, she doesn’t hide that darkness from the world—she embraces it as she lifts her legs and wraps them around Tom’s hips, drags her nails down his back and marks his throat with her teeth.

“Yes,” he hisses, his eyes like twin dark suns in his face that is unusually flushed. “Mine. Mine.”

“Yes,” she gasps back, feeling that flush of heat gather in her stomach again. He pounds into her, lifting her hips to meet his thrusts, and she tumbles over the edge with a strangled scream. He thrusts twice more, and then stiffens. She watches him, fascinated by the way that his face becomes a hard mask—not to hide emotion, but as though someone has carved his face into an expression of mingled dark triumph and terrible pleasure.

He collapses on her body as she slowly catches her breath. There are no soft kisses to be given, or soft cuddles. When he lifts his head, his eyes are normal again—that frightening intensity is gone. He pushes himself off her body, and she ignores the cold, empty feeling that it leaves behind. She has almost become accustomed to it now.

She sits upright, pleased with the soft ache between her thighs. He sits across from her, ignoring his nudity. She has a feeling that he would not be so open with anyone else—not even Bella. She hasn’t decided if the Tom in her dreams is the memory of a boy long dead, or if it is the real Voldemort who simply comes to her in the guise of the boy she once thought she knew. Sometimes he mentions things that only Voldemort—and not Tom—could know, and she always ignores them. She doesn’t want to sully it with thoughts of death or the fact that she’s fucking a mass murderer. She wants to look at that Byronic brooding face and feels his body in hers and nothing more.

“I’d better leave,” she says quietly, rising to her feet. She holds out her hand for him to give her the tattered nightgown, and he silently hands it to her. She slips it over her head and smoothes it over her hips, then stares down at him for a long moment.

He slides her a look over one bare, smooth shoulder, and she can’t resist leaning down to kiss that bare expanse of skin, her mouth unexpectedly tender after the heartless way that they treated each other just moments before. He stills beneath her mouth, and she feels a sigh tremble out of him. “You make no sense to me,” he says quietly, staring straight ahead. She blinks, startled. He has never really spoken to her in times like these. But she stays quiet, curious. She sees his jaw tighten. “You come here night after night, and we fuck, but I don’t know you.”

“Does that bother you?” she asks, her voice curious.

He looks at her again over his shoulder, and there is something in his eyes that surprises her. He actually looks a little hesitant. Then the look is gone, and he rises to his feet, jerking on his trousers and shirt. “No,” he says brusquely. “No, it doesn’t bother me. Because you’re just someone to fuck, Ginevra,” he tells her cruelly, and she tries not to be hurt by it. She knows that’s all it is, but at some level it still strikes a little arrow at her heart.

“Yes,” she says emotionlessly. “That’s all it is.” Then she turns away from him, and she is rising through that velvet darkness again. But this time there is only a sick feeling that lingers at the pit of her stomach as she drifts out of her dream. She is familiar with that feeling too—she feels it every time that she leaves Tom.

Ginny wakes and sits upright in bed with a jerk, her breath trembling. Her body throbs and aches, and she nearly buries her head in her pillow and cries. It feels as though Tom has aroused her and then left her, although she had her release in her dream. But here in her lonely bed, she still needs something more. She tries to blank out her mind as she slips out of bed and glides toward the door and down the stairs. She peeks in the common room and sees that it is deserted, and then slips up the stairs to the boys dormitory.

She cracks the door to Harry’s room and slips through it, moving on silent feet toward his bed. As she climbs into it and raises her wand to cast the silencing charm, she abruptly realizes that the bed is empty—the covers are in tangles and half-thrown off the bed, and there is no Harry sleeping innocently. She nearly whimpers at the ache between her thighs, and she clenches her fist against the urge. Breath trembling, she goes to Harry’s trunk and unlocks it, withdrawing a small parchment. She murmurs the words, and sees the castle’s outline bloom. Her eyes skim it quickly, and find that Harry is in the prefects’ bathroom. She distantly wonders how he managed to get inside, and then shoves the map under her arm and steals out of the room.

She ignores the Fat Lady’s grumbles at being awakened and slips through the hall, one eye on the map to make sure that she doesn’t run into a professor or Filch. She doesn’t let herself think of how pitiful she is that she’s seeking out Harry to this extent. Instead she floats through the hallways, as ethereal and pale as one of the ghosts. She reaches the prefect’s bathroom and opens it—luckily Dumbledore made her a prefect this year—and steps inside.

The room is only lit by candles, and she glances quickly around, wondering where Harry is. A small splash draws her gaze to find that Harry is sprawled in one of the large pools of water, his eyes closed and his body relaxed. She glides toward him, noticing that his eyes are closed and that he doesn’t seem to be aware of her presence. She steps quietly into the water, ignoring that her long white nightgown becomes soaked and translucent. The water against her bare, highly sensitive skin makes her bite back a moan as she wades toward Harry.

It is only when she’s close enough for him to feel the ripples of her passage that his eyes snap open. Then he gasps, jerking backwards in shock. “Ginny?” he stammers, shrinking back against the wall and nearly sliding off the ledge where he sits. “What are you doing here?”

She stares at his face and somehow manages to feel a moment of pity. Poor Harry. Caught up in her battle between herself and Tom. But she moves forward still and settles astride his knees and leans forward to kiss him. Despite the ache in her body, she wants to be gentle. Harry is innocent in a way that she is not—Harry still somehow believes in tenderness. Every time that she slips into his bed, she chips away at that belief a little bit. Tonight she feels fragile and wounded somehow, and she can’t simply take what she wants from him.

Her mouth caresses his, coaxes his open. He is almost perfectly still, but she can feel his heart beating rapidly. She slides her hands up his bare chest, water sliding in rivulets down his smooth skin. He breaks his mouth from hers and stares at her. “Ginny, what are you doing?” he asks again, and this time his voice is firmer. “I don’t know what’s been happening lately, but we can’t do this. You’re Ron’s little sister.”

A flash of anger disturbs the stillness of her mind. “You didn’t think that when you were whimpering my name,” she hisses, and sees the surprise and the flash of hurt in his eyes.

She bites her lip instantly, then touches her mouth to his in silent apology. “I want you, Harry,” she whispers. “Please—I want to feel your warmth.”

She sees the puzzlement on his face, and ignores it. Her hands slip beneath the water and over his cock. He gasps, his head falling back on his neck. She feels an odd sense of de ja vu—as if this time she is Tom and Harry is Ginny. She leans close to him as her hands stroke him slowly, feeling him harden in her hands. The water ripples around them, and the candles make Harry look like a glorious marble statue gilded in flickering light. She trails her lips over his throat and to his mouth, closing her own eyes as she allows herself to be tender instead of nearly frantic with lust.

She strokes Harry’s cock slowly, moving her fingers over his body beneath the water. When he whispers her name in a dazed tone, his eyes glazed and his body tense, she slides forward and lifts her hands out of the water to cup his face and touch her lips to his. She slides down onto him, and she isn’t sure if the shudder comes from him or her. “God,” he grits out. “Ginny—Christ. You feel so fucking good.”

Harry’s hands are tender as he caresses her breasts and tangles his fingers in her hair. She leans against him for one moment, her breath coming in small puffs against the damp skin of his throat. Harry’s hands smooth down her back in a movement that arouses as much as it comforts. Then she is riding him, still slowly, still savoring the warm water that caresses sensitive skin, and the sound of Harry’s breathless whispers and unconscious endearments as opposed to Tom’s cold silence and hissed demands.

His hands are on her hips, but she doesn’t need guidance. She keeps her eyes open and watches his face as she rides him, quickening and slowing her pace as she feels him get closer to the edge. She wants to stay this way forever—Harry’s body in hers, and the slow roll of pleasure that slides through her body like fine brandy. She wants to drag it out as long as possible, because once it’s over Harry will look at her and feel regret. She doesn’t want to see yet another rejection—she wants to listen to Harry’s whispers echo in the near-silent room, feel the warmth of the water around them, and his body moving almost without his control as she drives him closer and then slows again.

“Christ,” he grits out. “Ginny—please. Move faster.”

“No,” she whispers, laying her head into the curve of his shoulder as she rides him. She closes her eyes and inhales the smell of sex and sweat and that smell that is uniquely Harry. His arms sweep around her and hold her close, and tears sting her eyes at his tenderness. She presses a kiss to his throat and her hips move more quickly. She keeps her head on his shoulder, listening to his strangled gasps and feeling his hands dig into her back.

Then his hand slips beneath the water and his thumb rubs over her clit—once, twice—and she is coming, tightening around him in a spasmodic rush. She feels his breath sob out, and then his hands are at her hips and he is thrusting up into her and he comes, his hands pressing her down onto his cock. Then he slumps back, and she cuddles against him, her head still on his shoulder.

She feels warm and loved and calm, and as one of Harry’s hands comes up to stroke her tangled hair, she buries her face against his chest to keep him from seeing her tears. This is what it should be, she thinks sadly.

“Ginny,” he sighs. “Ginny, I don’t understand why you do this every night.”

“I don’t either,” she whispers hoarsely, suppressed tears trembling in her voice. “But—I can’t stop myself.”

His sigh is long and deep, and his hand continues to stroke her hair. “You know we shouldn’t do this. Ron would kill us if we knew.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Ron.” Once she would have snarled at him for such a statement, but now she can’t muster the anger. She wants to lie here and let Harry pet her and love her, even for only a little while.

“Ginny—“

“Please,” she interrupts, lifting her head to stare at him steadily. “Please, Harry. Can we just sit here for a while and you hold me?”

His eyes are startled and slightly sad, and he draws her head back down to his shoulder and wraps his arms around her. She burrows close, unwilling to leave this quiet watery sanctuary and Harry’s arms. “Make me stay with you,” she whispers against his collarbone, so softly that she’s not sure that he heard her, and not sure she wants him to.

His arms tighten around her for a moment, and then he murmurs, “Stay with me, Ginny.”

“Here,” she whispers more urgently. “Let’s stay here. Let’s stay here tonight, and make love and do nothing else. Please?”

There is a moment’s hesitation, and then he murmurs, “Then we will.”

She nearly cries at his easy acceptance. “Thank you,” she whispers hoarsely. “Thank you.” She presses a fervent kiss to his bony shoulder and clutches him as though he were a large teddy bear.

They remain there for the rest of the night, long leisurely kisses and flickering light and slow seductions. As Harry escorts her to her dormitory right before dawn, kissing her with tongue and confidence that he never had before, she thinks confidently, I’m never going to dream about Tom again. I don’t need Tom anymore. I have Harry now. Really have him.

She walks up the stairs and burrows beneath her blankets for a last snatch of sleep before classes, feeling relief loosen the cold band around her heart that Tom had woven over the nights.

And the next night she falls into that velvet darkness again, full of cold fire and slicing whips of cruel desire, and makes promises to be mourned over when passion fades.