Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition Round 7: Pairing Palooza

Theme: Choose a pairing based only its ship name

Position: Seeker for the Holyhead Harpies

Prompt: S.S. Gin 'n Tonic (Ginny/Tom Riddle, Jr.)

Word Count (Pages): 1,845

Thank you for editing, TheNextFolchart! This is dedicated to you :)

Note: This is a Muggle University!AU and takes place in the modern day.

The Library Intern

"Excuse me?"

He raised his eyes slowly, struggling to keep his mouth arranged in a pleasant smile as he looked at the girl standing on the other side of the circulation desk. Pleasant. That was the word they kept tossing around. Try to be pleasant. "May I help you?"

"Yeah." She looked nervous, this girl, and a bit flushed, as if she'd had to work up the courage to approach him. "I'm looking for a book."

He raised his eyebrows and fought the urge to scoff. "Imagine that," he said as sarcastically as he could manage while still sounding pleasant. "Looking for a book in a library."

The girl blushed and swept a lock of red hair out of her eyes. "I'm looking for a particular book." She leaned forward, squinting at his chest; it was a moment before he realized she was trying to read his name tag. "Tom Riddle."

"Guilty." He dog-eared the corner of his page and set his book down. "Which book are you looking for?"

"I'm not sure."

This time, he couldn't help scoffing. "You're looking for a particular book, but you don't know which one?"

The girl's jaw tightened. "You know, for a library intern, you're not very helpful."

"You seem surprised." Tom smirked. "You must be a freshman."

"And you must be a thirteen-year-old, for all the maturity you're showing."

Tom sighed. "How may I help you, Miss Freshman?"

"Ginny." She shrugged out of her red backpack and set it on the circulation desk. After a moment of rifling through papers and books, she pulled out a planner. "I need to do research for a paper." She showed him the planner, which had October 31st circled in green with McGonagall's Essay Due scrawled across it in messy handwriting. "Due in two weeks."

"Professor McGonagall." He rubbed his jaw. "So it's for her Psychology class, I assume?"

She nodded. "I'm a Psych major."

He quirked his mouth up in a little half-smile. "They all say that."

"I—of course, a lot of people say that. It's the most popular major."

"Is that why you picked it?" Tom scratched lightly at his temple. "You're six weeks into your freshman year of university. You're going to change your mind. Trust me."

Ginny gripped her planner so tightly that her knuckles turned white. "Don't act like you know me."

"I know you better than you know yourself."

She stuffed her planner into her bag. "What makes you so sure of that?"

He grinned. "I'm a Psychology major."

Ginny opened her mouth, and then apparently decided he wasn't worth it. She about-faced and marched toward the computer section of the library.

"Oh, come on, wait." Tom abandoned his post at the circulation desk and followed her fiery hair.

Ginny didn't stop until she reached a computer. "Why?" She sat heavily. "So you can continue to harass me?"

"It wasn't harassment. It was friendly teasing, at worst." Tom sat beside her. "I can help you."

Ginny fixed her eyes on the computer screen and tapped away at the keyboard, filling in her school email address and password before clicking Log In.

"Weasley," he said.

She looked at him, a startled expression on her face. "How do you know my last name?"

"I told you. I know you better than you know yourself." Her eyes widened, and he burst out laughing. "Oh, for God's sake, Ginny, I saw you type in your email a second ago. GMWeasley."

Ginny's face turned bright red. "Oh."

"Do you do that a lot?" Tom asked. "Blush, I mean?"

Her skin, as he'd known it would, reddened even more. "If you don't mind, I'm trying to do some research." She took hold of the mouse and slid it toward the Internet Explorer icon.

"Wait." Tom grabbed the mouse—and Ginny's hand—before she could click.

Ginny flinched at the contact but didn't pull her hand away. "What?"

"Don't use Internet Explorer." He moved the mouse to the right side of the screen. "Use Chrome. It's much faster. It won't crash on you."

Together, they clicked.

"Thanks," Ginny said finally. Tom removed his hand. "Any other tips?"

"Oh, now you want my help?"

"I've wanted your help from the second I walked in here." Ginny looked frustrated. "You're the library intern. It's what you're here for. To help."

"Oh. Right." Tom picked at a hangnail. "If you want to know the truth, you're the first person who's ever asked for anything more complex than, 'Where's the printer?' or, 'Will you watch my bag while I run to the restroom?'"

Ginny had her fingers hovering over the keyboard. "Sounds boring."

"Extremely."

"Why do you work here, then?"

He shrugged. "It gives me time to read and write."

"You're a writer?"

"I've kept a few diaries."

Ginny typed a few keywords into the search bar at the top of the screen. "Well, Tom Riddle, since you're a writer, maybe you'd like to help me write my Psychology paper."

He sighed. "You need all the help you can get," he said as he took the mouse from her. "You've spelled psychology with a 'k.'"

Ginny was about to shut down her laptop for the night when the email notification came through.

So what does the "M" stand for?

A smile ghosted across her face as she glanced down at the email signature: Tom Riddle. What M? she typed in the "reply" field.

The answer came back immediately: The "M" in your middle name. GMWeasley. Ginny . . . Martha? Mary? Moron?

She felt her smile deepen as she tapped out her reply. Molly. It's my mother's name.

I'm named after my father, unfortunately.

Unfortunately?

Deadbeat, read Tom's reply. Never wanted anything to do with me or my mother. And I want nothing to do with him, either. But I'm stuck with the name.

You could always change your name.

No reply for a few minutes, and Ginny was beginning to worry he'd gone to bed, but then: Have you started on that Psykology paper?

Ginny fought back the blush that was creeping across her face. I know how to spell it.

Whatever you say. If you want someone to proofread it, I'm in the library every day from ten to six.

A new kind of blush began to spread into her cheeks. I might take you up on that.

She showed up at ten-thirty.

"I've got the outline all finished," she said. She passed her handwritten notes across the circulation desk to Tom, who hadn't looked up from his book yet.

"Overachiever. You're definitely a freshman."

"You were a freshman once, too, you know."

He glanced up, raising his eyebrows from behind the pages of his book. "That was a long time ago. I'm much older and wiser now." He sighed as she nudged the outline toward him again. "Calm down, Ginny. I haven't even had my morning coffee yet."

"Could you just look over it and tell me whether I'm on the right track?"

Tom sighed and picked up her notes. "You've spelled 'psychology' right this time, at least."

She blushed, and he was filled with the inexplicable desire to see her blush again.

"You haven't used any complete sentences, I see." He plucked a red pen from the cup on his desk. "This should say y-o-u-apostrophe-r-e—actually, this word shouldn't be here at all. We don't use second person in academic writing."

Something in his stomach thrilled to see her skin turn red.

"Your outline plans for six paragraphs. Is that all? You should have six pages. This isn't high school anymore." He flipped to her Works Cited section. "My, my, someone's a fan of Wikipedia."

She was staring at the floor. "It's just an outline."

At the sound of the humiliation lacing her voice, everything in his chest unclenched, and he felt a kind of pity wash through him. "I know. Don't worry. I'll help you."

"I'm hopeless."

Be pleasant, Tom. "You aren't hopeless."

She looked up at him with a tentative smile, and he watched with mild disappointment as her blush faded.

"Brought you a coffee!"

Tom looked up from his book just in time to see Ginny set a cup of steaming liquid on top of a pile of books that were precariously stacked on the circulation desk. The whole thing tumbled to the floor, drenching Tom's book with hot coffee that narrowly missed his lap.

"You idiot!" Tom held his book by one corner and shook it furiously, flicking droplets of coffee everywhere. "What the hell were you thinking?"

She was red again—she was always red, blushing from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes, and she hated herself for it. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

"You can't bring drinks in a bloody library."

"I know, but I thought I'd surprise you, and—"

"It's fine." Tom closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's fine. Don't worry."

She bit her lip. It had been two weeks since she'd met Tom, and it seemed that not a day could go by without her embarrassing herself in front of him. "I'm sorry."

"I know you are."

She couldn't please him. She was always doing something wrong. "My essay is due today," she said. She set a neatly stapled pile of papers on the circulation desk, just out of the way of the coffee spill. "Will you give it one last look before I hand it in?"

Tom looked as if he'd rather be anywhere else in the world, but he took the essay and leafed through it. "Looks good," he said when he reached the last page.

Her breath caught in her chest. "Really?"

He nodded. "It should be, considering I wrote most of it."

She blushed.

"But your into is good. Quite good, actually."

She smiled. "I wrote that part on my own."

"I know." Tom put the paper back down on the circulation desk. "Is this the last I'm going to see of you, now that you've finished your paper?"

She shook her head. "I'll be back. Professor Snape just assigned a research paper on the history of Chemistry, so I've got more to write."

"Good." Tom still had one hand resting on top of her essay, and when she moved to try to take it back, he reached out and grabbed her wrist. His palm was cold against her skin, but the chill that coursed through her veins was one of pleasure, and she realized for the first time that the reason she came back to the library every day was that, in spite of the way he seemed to like humiliating her, she desperately wanted to belong to him.

"I'd be disappointed," Tom said as he leaned toward her, "if you told me I'd never see that blush of yours again."

Ginny's skin warmed, and all she had time to say was a soft, "Tom—" before he'd tugged her halfway across the circulation desk and pressed his mouth against hers.