Author: Miss Tangerine
Title: Lies My Lover Tells Me
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and everything associated is property of JK Rowling, no offense or copyright infringement is intended.
Warnings: Femslash and general weirdness. Possible grammar and other small errors, as English is my second language. Feel free to correct me. Feedback is loved and adored, though don't feel obligated. Happy reading!

Language is treacherous. People take words for granted, use them as weapons, both to kill and mend. Sometimes words are all you have. Just words.

I used to speak Chinese with my older family members when I visited. My grandmother would tell me it's important to know and remember your heritage, because it is the cornerstone of what you are. She told me to make sure my little sister remembered it, too. She never spoke english very well, she knew only the rudimentaries, and she could only express the roughest basics, which also meant she never lied. She didn't trust the language enough to wield it as a sword, weave the words like spider's silk. I always liked her so much because I knew she'd tell me the truth.

Other people lie all the time. My parents lie, Dumbledore lies, my friends lie. Usually they do it to protect. But they still lie. Maybe Cedric did, too. I'll probably never find out, though, and maybe that's best. I hate lies. The only thing worse than the lies you tell others are the lies you tell yourself. They conceal and change a part of you you'll never get back. It's so easy to get lost in a mind built of labyrinth lies. Ginny does both. I love her, well, I think I do, but she's a liar. She smiles and laughs when I know she's been crying, and sometimes she pushes me away like my touch stings her.

Sometimes she whispers names in her sleep. The names of her dead brothers and friends, and other names, names I don't recognise. Sometimes she says them when she's awake, too, without realising. She called me Tom, once. When we-. She apologised, said it was a slip of the tounge, but now she always bites her lip so hard it bleeds. Then I always kiss her and lick it off, and I've come to associate the metallic taste of blood with her. My Ginny tastes of blood. Blood and fire, like the boiling rain that fell during the war, before the great silence.

Everyone's so afraid of silence now. Except me. I like keeping quiet and listening to it, listening to her breathing, attuned to the beat of my heart. I like tuning into her like that. I don't tell her that, though. I think it would scare her. She's so afraid of the quiet, even though I'm the only one who causes it in her life.

I like to think of myself as a dark lake. I'm a lake, a small, still mountain lake, so dark it doesn't reflect anything, not even the sun. Ginny's the fire that falls and makes the water rise into the air as steam. I don't want to go down the trail of thought where fire boils water to nothingness, or water swallows fire up like firework trails fading into the night, leaving only the imprint on the retina behind.

I love Ginny. Really. I love love love love her, and she's not Cedric, and she's not dead, and she sleeps with me, and the names she whispers are the names of ghosts, long since dead. And it doesn't matter.

She doesn't do the small things she used to do anymore. She doesn't scrunch up her nose when she thinks, or sing as she works. She still laughs and smiles and tries to shine as brightly as she used to, to light up everyone else's darkness, but she's fighting a losing battle. We won the war of the wizarding world, but lost our hope. We're a generation of children turned into soldiers, and everyone's laughter sounds fake. She's not my Ginny when she laughs. She's a strange impersonater, wearing her skin. She's a liar.

I'm in love with her when she's quiet, even though it's rare. She doesn't sleep much because she always has nightmares, and she fears the dark void of even scarier dreamless sleep induced by potions. So she goes on and on and on until she drops from exhaustion and I have to carry her to bed.

Those small moments are enough for me. If there's one thing I know, it's that you have to treasure the moments you have, because they'll slip through your hands like water. Cedric and I thought we had infinity all to ourselves, and when he died I could barely remember his voice. People die when you forget them. Maybe it's better that way.

Ginny gets up every morning and breathes life back into the ghosts she carries on her back. They weigh her down, and some day she has to throw them off or buckle underneath them. I have ghosts following me around, too. Metaphorical ghosts, though, not the real ones. Magic will take it out of a metaphor. But I have ghosts, but they have to carry themselves. I allow myself to think of them one hour a day, usually right before noon when Ginny goes out shopping, always asking me to join her, but I know she wants to be alone. Sometimes she comes home emptyhanded, and I have a feeling she's been off, wandering the streets, trying to get lost and lose the part of her that makes her cry at night.

I don't feel very much anymore. I don't think it's shellshock, or traumas or anything, though. I just think that I've felt enough for a whole lifetime and there's not much left. I treasure what little I have left, and only spend it on things that are worth it. I do my best to love her, because I know I do, even when I don't feel it. I get up and love love love her to death, I love her at noon, at teatime, at supper, and when I fall into her arms at night. I love her twentyfour hours a day, except for that one hour around eleven o'clock in the morning, though only on weekdays, where I sit at the kitchen table and don't feel anything.

Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I think of Cedric and my family and Harry, sometimes I think of Ginny like a stranger I've only just met, but don't know. Sometimes I don't think at all. Sometimes I still sit there when Ginny comes home, and she gets so worried about me. Sometimes I've been crying without even noticing. Then she sits down on the floor, putting her head in my lap and kisses my hands. That's the one time she never talks, when everything feels dreamy and surreal, and we're just two people in love and the war never happened. Sometimes she sighs peacefully against me, and I feel her warm breath on my skin, and a bit of her heat leaks into me and lingers there, and I feel I could die just then.