This used to be a story I wrote a few years ago, rather terribly, but now I've fixed it up and it is ready for re-release! Enjoy :)

Chapter 1

I ended up in a trance. I didn't understand. I couldn't quite comprehend what was happening to me, what was being done to me. I stuttered out a response. "What d'you mean?" My words were slurred together as if I was drunk, but this was a completely sobering thing that was taking place. I didn't understand, but he didn't need to answer my question. I knew what he was going to say, maybe not word for word but I knew. I didn't want to believe it. That was my problem. I think that's why it affected me so badly. My brain refused to process it all. The words. I hated them. I couldn't handle hearing those words put together that way.

"Me and you, Gin, we're too...different. I can't quite explain it properly..." He trailed off and probably expected me to smile and shrug and accept it. I could not.

"I don't - don't understand? Different, how?" We had been so happy for six whole months. Then I started crying, sobbing, and I knew he had done it. Tears. Tears falling freely down my cheeks. It made me look weak. But I was. He had used so few words to break my heart, and it just seemed so easy to him. It was over so quickly.

"We just are. I don't completely understand it myself, Gin, but please know that it's nothing to do with you, okay? It's all me, my problems. I'm sorry. Really." He gave me a last small hug and a kiss on my wet cheek. It was that that hurt the most. It was so sickeningly final. Then he turned and walked away. I was left standing by myself, with an intense throbbing pain inside and a stunned feeling of disbelief.

His words resounded in my head that night, over and over and over. I don't want to be with you anymore. How could breaking someone inside be so simple? So quick? And he was left without me, feeling happier, better. While I was left feeling shattered. Empty. He had drained me of energy. I collapsed into an armchair in the common room by the dying embers of the fire and tried to drown myself in my misery. Everything was so quiet. The silence pressed in on my eardrums and made me feel like screaming. Every few minutes I would be overcome by another wave or sorrow and a fresh onslaught of tears would come crashing down. I couldn't stop thinking about those words. That boy. I had thought about marrying him. That's how much I loved him. Love him. Because I still do. And I really, truly, honestly, sincerely thought he loved me too. Clearly not. What was wrong with me?

It seemed such a strange thing that the world was still turning. Life was still happening. For everyone else anyway. My state of insanity and depression lasted the entire night. I didn't sleep a wink. In the morning, people came downstairs and I was still there. They tried to ask me questions. I couldn't hear them. Couldn't or didn't want to? Others stood back and stared, like I was some new zoo exhibit. I suppose I looked like some kind of rabid animal, so I didn't blame them. I remember they didn't have faces. They were just blurs. Empty faces. One girl tried to pull me up and take me upstairs. I think I nearly bit her.

By lunchtime I knew that I was well and truly alone. No one cared. Not Harry Potter. Not my friends. I didn't even care anymore. What was the point in life if my one and only love was no longer in it? Suddenly a face appeared above me. I looked up and tried to make sense of the facial features. It was Jayda. My best friend, I guess you could say. My only friend, was more on the mark. I closed my eyes again and allowed the headache that had been threatening all day to finally pillage and destroy my brain.

"Ginny, he was just a boy. Get up." She was trying to be blunt. I think I was still far too weak to let that work on me. I cried more. I don't think she got the fact that he was the boy. Then she startled me by picking me up, over her shoulder, and carrying me upstairs. Although she struggled, I was quite amazed at the strength she was displaying. Jayda was always like that. So strong and loyal. What a Gryffindor. My trance had ended when she threw me onto my bed. Finally I slept.

When I awoke later that evening, it took me a few moments to register my surroundings and figure out why I was fully clothed, waking at dinnertime. Then I groaned and fell back onto the pillows. Everything flooded back and hit me like a tsunami. Just as tears threatened to overcome me again, Jayda entered the dormitory and came to sit on the end of my bed. She looked slightly more sympathetic than I remembered her being earlier.

"Do you wanna tell me what happened? I saw you this morning and thought someone had died. Then I heard rumours all day. Harry beat you up, Harry killed your Pygmy Puff, Harry told you he was gay, Harry told you he was gay with your brother. Any of these true?" She was trying to make light of the situation.

I allowed myself a small smile. "Someone has died. Me. I feel so...empty. I feel like nothing." It was unbelievable that one person could make me feel like this. I had deteriorated from a happy loving girl to a shell in so few hours.

Jayda raised her eyebrows sceptically. "Look, Ginny, I know he dumped you, and I know how you felt about him. But if he's that much of an idiot to not realise that you are the best thing he will ever lose, then he isn't worth crying over." I wasn't ready for this yet. I was still thinking of ways to get him back. "How 'bout I go get you some food? That'll make you feel better. Then we can talk properly." She smiled a genuine caring smile and I sat up to hug her.

"Thanks, Jay." I mumbled, before burying myself in my blankets as she left again.

By the next morning Jayda had managed to talk me round to actually showering and getting dressed. I decided to face the world with a blank face and silence. We headed down to the Great Hall early, in the hope to beat the gossips to breakfast. And also him. My heart was beating very fast and I was more nervous than the first time I set foot in that Hall. Everything went well to start with. I got a few stares, mostly from the other early Gryffindors but I managed to ignore them and eat my cereal. Jayda kept saying quietly that they were just jealous of my amazing single life. I just wanted to laugh. Or vomit. One of the two. Then it all went downhill from there.

Harry Potter entered the Hall and sat down a few spaces down from me, on the other side of the table. That made eating a particularly difficult task from then on. He looked at me and smiled a weak, pitying smile. It made me feel sick. Jayda told me to ignore him. I did my best. So many thoughts were racing through my brain. What if I went and spoke to him? What if he came and spoke to me? What if I really did throw up? What if I threw up on him? Then I got a highly irrational thought that maybe with a day to think about it, he had realised that he still loved me. I told Jayda that I was going to talk to him and she practically had a heart attack. By this time the Hall had filled up slightly more, especially our table, but when Harry Potter was on my mind, there wasn't really much room for anything else.

I stood up, and the whole table, including him, flicked their eyes straight to me. It didn't put me off. I walked down towards him and leant over. I swallowed nothing. My mouth was as dry as parchment. "Ha-Harry? Could I talk to you-outside? Please?" I put on the best smile I could for him. He had always liked my smiles. Or so he said.

Immediately he dropped his fork and stood up, nodding his head. I guess he still felt sorry for me. Perhaps he was humouring me. Perhaps he was thanking every single God that existed that I loved him. We moved into the Entrance Hall, where there were far fewer people. We were close and I could smell him. I thought it would make me less nervous. It made me feel worse.

"What is it, Gin?" He seemed just as nervous as me.

Well? What was it, Ginny? I hadn't thought of what to say. Then it all just came to me. I told him everything that I wanted in the entire world in a few small words. "Well, I was just wondering...-just wondering if, maybe, you might, um, perhaps want to be with me again?" God, I sounded so stupid. "You know, we can-can just forget what happened...th-the other night?"

Oh, God, oh, God, oh God. He looked so uncomfortable. What was he going to say? I held my breath and waited for those words. I had my happy tears and smile ready to go. "Oh, wow...Gin. Erm, this is...wow. Um, I...I can't. I mean, I...look, you're a really amazing person, really. But, I...you see, there's someone else."

Suddenly I couldn't breathe. The room became very hot and I felt my cheeks burning up. It was like it was happening all over again. I didn't say anything. Almost as if I was waiting for him to take it back. Or for time to rewind itself.

He spoke again: "I'm really sorry, Ginny. Really. I thought you would take it better than this...I'm sorry."

His hand was on my shoulder and he smiled sympathetically. Then he disappeared back into the Great Hall. Slowly I managed to regain some form of consciousness. Why had I done that to myself? It was torture. It was him killing me, murdering me a second time. The trance returned. I made my way, zombie-like, back to the spot beside Jayda. Everyone was watching me. Jayda looked apprehensive as I sat down next to her.

"Ginny-"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Ginny, I just didn't want you to get hurt even more..."

"You should've told me."

"It seemed like something you didn't really need to know. I'm sorry."

"That's not your decision to make. You should've told me."

"Ginny, I'm sorry..."

I kind of didn't feel a thing. I sat at the table and stared at nothing ahead of me. I didn't cry yet. I did my best to ignore everything and anything surrounding me until I was out of the public eye. The girls around me must have been counting down the seconds until I fled or cried and burst with emotion. The evil ones from my year were giggling. Jayda swore at them. The rest of the morning I experienced outside of myself. I guess I became someone else. Or I saw it as leaving my body and watching everything as a third person in my own life.

Ruby Harish came into existence. Obviously she already existed before any of this, but before any of this I never knew she was a person. I wished I was still ignorant of that fact. At first I didn't notice a thing; I was too busy dying inside. Then I saw a very pretty, blonde, big-bosomed, blue-eyed girl bounce her way into the room. She waved cheerily at someone on the Gryffindor table before sitting down with the Hufflepuffs. At least the attention was off of me. She was like the sun. Everything seemed to centre around her. I looked away, and back at the dregs of my cereal and thought nothing of it.

Five minutes later I heard a high-pitched giggle, and then the pretty, blonde, big-bosomed, blue-eyed girl came to our table. She was smiling and giggling. I felt a huge brick weight fall to the bottom of my stomach and bile rose in my throat. She sat down next to Harry Potter, chatting away as if they were the best of friends. He looked nervous as she looked at him with her huge eyes. Was it nerves because he knew I was there watching them? Or because this beautiful girl was clearly interested in him? I don't really know what hurt me more. She was so not like me. Had he just been pretending with me then?

Jayda was angrily muttering death threats under her breath next to me: "...gunna rip his bloody guts out, the git...squeeze his neck...and that bitch...who she thinks she is..." Part of me was rather amused, another part was glad I had such a loyal friend. The other part, the one that was barely holding back tears, wanted her to just be quiet and let me be.

Seven seconds later I was running out of the Great Hall sobbing in tears. I had happened to glance over just as their lips connected in a soft kiss. Their first? The ache inside my chest pounded away, and I felt a terrible loud drumming in my head, my heart beating rapidly. Jayda was giving the two of them an earful as I left. I ran up to the dormitory as fast as I could and slammed the door behind me. I didn't want to think about anything anymore. Jayda was close behind.