Author: Karigan Rohanna (ladyofgondor@diaryland.com)
Feedback: greatly desired.
Written: June 28, 2003
Summery: Ginny is home after her first year... and no one understands what has happened to her... not even herself.
Warnings: PG, Dark, CoS spoilers.
A/N: For all of you who have not understood the things in your life. Thanks Sar.
Ginny Weasley is hurting herself again. Her family
knows this, and they try to deny the fact she is. They don't know why she
draws on her hand with ink, or why the skin is inflamed and red around
the lines of ink, or why the ink doesn't wash off... but they don't understand
Little Ginny these days. Something about her has changed.
And Ginny knows they know, because she has locked
her door, and refuses to hear them, and because they cannot enter her room,
her sanctuary, her haven... her place of pain. They would try to comfort
her, but she doesn't want comfort. They would try to make the pain go away,
but that is the last thing she wants-- the pain is what she needs to think...
something extreme enough to cancel out the pain other places.
There is a rift inside, and Ginny feels like an
empty book. An empty book is a voiceless book... empty pages are an untold
story, and an untold story is never understood. And Ginny wants to be understood.
She wants it enough that it makes her head ache and the tears flow.
She holds her head as it aches, and she buries her
tears deep within a handkerchief-- but that doesn't stop either the aching
or the tears. They continue on, as the night continues on, and she knows
she is dying.
She can only be dying, she has decided. Only death
can be this painful. Only death can make her fingertips bleed red ink,
and her quill pen write in blood... what is happening to her? Why does
she keep blacking out the way she does to wake with her face wet with tears
and the pages of her book menacingly empty? Why doesn't anyone help her?
Can she trust no one? They tell her not to be silly--
no, her pen doesn't write in blood. Then why does it dry dark? She must
be bleeding ink when she cuts herself to try and make the pain in her head
go away-- it stays red for days. Did she become a book, that she can only
bleed in ink? Is the quill pen her true being-- is she, at the moment,
gripping between her fingers her true self, the reality of what she is?
She's so confused.
Why doesn't someone help her?
No one is there for her. Tom is gone-- and Tom could
explain everything. No one admits that she has issues... but Tom did. He
told her, 'Yes, Ginny, something is wrong. You have to figure out what.'
He believed in her too-- 'You can do it' Tom told her. 'You are brave.'
And then, she'd thought she was brave. No one admits that the marks
upon her hands are deliberate cuts-- they are all pretending she's Ginny--
an introverted, maybe a little upset Ginny, but normal... and she's not.
Tom never pretended... he saw through to her, he let her come out, he listened...
But Tom was a lie, she tells herself. A shadow,
a lie, not the truth. Her family is the truth... Harry saving her, that
was the truth... she did need to be saved. Tom would have killed her. She
has been told that a thousand times... but she can't believe it. Tom understood--
Tom wouldn't hurt her on purpose, would he?
Tom couldn't be Voldemort. It doesn't make sense...
Oh, but it does, a savage, mature voice says in
the back of her head. He hurt you, and friends don't hurt friends-- but
dark lords hurt faithful acolytes. And Harry Potter, who isn't even your
friend, saved you from being hurt-- and are you even grateful? No, you
selfish little brat. Your family is trying to love you, and you are just
too selfish. Grow up.
The thoughts makes the pain her forehead redouble.
Is this what Harry feels like when his scar aches?
She cuts deeper into her flesh with the finely sharpened
edge of the quill. The prickle of pain makes the aching in her head reduce
to a mere twinge. She can breathe, she can think. Yes, the mature voice
is correct-- she is being immature. Ginny decides to listen to what else
the voice has to say. The line continues down the back of her hand. Its
ink coming out, not blood...
But when she tries to write with the ink in her
journal, it glistens the sinister red before drying to the brown of old
blood, while the lines on the back of her hand dries with the color of
ink, and washes off like ink, even when they are no longer damp and smearable.
Ginny doesn't understand why its mixed up. Her life
is not a page in a book-- the book is not her body. She is not some character
of fable... she isn't Tom, who hurt her and betrayed her and made her do
things she didn't want to do because she needed to be understood...
She's not.
Not Tom.
But not Ginny either. Not the Ginny her family thinks
she is. Not the Ginny everyone at school thought she was.
Who is she?
She's Virginia, she tells herself. She's Virginia,
and she's hurting herself, even though she doesn't want to, and that has
to stop. And she can make herself stop, and fix all her problems, and understand
who she is, if she'll just put the sharpened quill down and write it out--
really write it, on pages for the world to see, not just in her journal,
which is coded and locked and impossible for anyone-- except Tom-- to read.
Then she will be flesh and blood, and her words will be ink, and she'll
exist outside of the journal once more, as she used to.
But part of her is still bound to the pages of the
book-- even this book, which is not the same as the one Harry destroyed,
binds her. Part of her thinks she'll be understood if she suffers enough.
Part of Tom remains in her, alive and well, forcing her to believe that
if she sacrifices, and if she bleeds, and if it hurts, then someone, somewhere,
will understand, and their understanding will be enough to make the pain
better.
But she knows it is a lie.
Tom was a lie.
Ginny just wants to be understood.
Her family loves her, but they don't understand.
They think it is the same, but it isn't.
Ginny just wants to be understood.
But who can understand her, when she can't understand
herself?
Virginia, mature and in control, sets the quill
down and stands up and unlocks the door. She walks downstairs, sees the
faces of her family, and says nothing at all to the fear and questioning
in their eyes. They do not understand, and do not deserve to be told when
they will not understand.
The ink on Virginia's hand shimmers as it dries--
Ginny has been drawing snakes upon her skin.
Calmly, Virginia washes the still damp ink off,
but the outline of the snake remains.
No matter how hard she tries, Ginny can't escape,
can't erase, and can't go unchanged after the Chamber of Secrets.
