new year new snippet!!
tysm for the taggg @lifeisabitch-butimcute <3333 i've recently been obsessing over (and doing battle with) this little au wherein ginny and quirrell meet in a bar and have a conversation so.... here's some of that :)
Eventually, she takes a sip of her beer, puts down the glass, and offers, “I was eleven.”
The man’s eyes widen, and something flashes across them, something a little calculating and a little broken. Ginny wonders who he is.
“I was twenty-six,” he returns, and she thinks that there are probably very different circumstances surrounding each of their personal experiences - a little girl and a fully-grown man - but maybe that doesn’t matter. They’re both here, together in this bar, at the end of the day, and he’s not, and this man might be the only person she’s ever met who feels that gaping absence in the same way she does.
One thing Ginny has learnt about Tom Riddle is that he lingers. He clings to her - black ink in her bloodstream - long after she’d painstakingly scrubbed away the grime of the Chamber of Secrets, long after Harry Potter had chased each remaining piece of his tattered soul off the face of the earth, long after she and Harry had given up on their attempt at happily ever after.
She’s twenty-four now, it’s been thirteen years. She wonders how long it’s been for the man sitting across the table from her, if maybe he’s living proof that she’s never going to be rid of him.
no pressure tags for @quillkiller @static-radio-ao3 @sixlane @velanavis @carniferous @itsjaywalkers <3333