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title: Mealy Bug date: december 01, 2002 Ginny puts her arms around herself and shakes a bit -- it’s cold and damp in the Chamber. Tom, sitting cross-legged on the Chamber floor, is looking through the diary like a casual browser in Flourish and Botts. He raises it to his face and the nostrils in his long, Roman nose flare into dark circles. “You’ve been failing tests,” he says. A bright red FAILURE, in Professor McGonagall’s slanted handwriting, floats up underneath his fingertips. “Been busy,” Ginny mutters. She daren’t squat and clasp her hands in the V of her knees. “You’ve got to pull your socks up, Ginny,” says Tom like a remorseful Percy. He turns to her and grins so widely and sharply it looks like he is eating the world. “Pull them up, Ginny.” Ginny shivers and bends to yank her white socks knee high. She doesn’t know where her skirt went, she wishes she had it, Tom probably threw it into the flooded parts of the Chamber. She can see her shirt hanging from the fang of a stone snake; Tom impaled it through its sleeve. Tom smiles at her, swallows. Ginny has never seen Tom eat, not even in the memories he showed her in the beginning of their beautiful friendship. That was what Tom called it. Do you wear a brassiere, Ginny? Tom asked, like a best friend. I’ve heard doing push-ups works. And she did two hundred of them every night until she could see her veins stretch taut. You should eat less, you’re getting fat, Tom said. She stopped eating entirely, but she could never quite get to Tom’s point of thin-ness; it went straight past skinny and into the sort of slender that Ginny figured only weeping trees had. I only drink the water in the Chamber, Tom had told her once. Ginny had drowned herself trying to drink it all. The water in the Chamber, Ginny wanted to say, wasn’t just black water, it was ink. But she wasn’t brave enough. Some Gryffindor. Tom moves towards Ginny and makes little fingerprints all across her face; his fingertips are stained in black, like they’ve been dipped in ink. Ginny’s face must look like Tom’s passport now, or something. Ginny half expects Tom to pee on her, like wolves do; marking their territory. It’s something horrible and perverse and Ginny wants badly to giggle, except Tom would hit her. The basilisk, draped across Salazar Slytherin’s nose, flicks its tail in the water and then flicks Ginny’s skirt out and at her, a limp rag of grey. It catches her around the stomach and makes her want to lie down and not move forever, if only to stop the shivering. There’s a scuffle somewhere in the bowels of the Chamber. Tom turns to her. “Get dressed, Ginny. We’re having a guest over for dinner.” And he drags her forward by the tie hanging between her small breasts, one hand on her waist, seeping out her warmth where his fingers press. It’s funny how much damage a stupid little girl can do. |
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