His presence is overwhelming. It envelops you. Holds you. Ensnares you until you no longer know where he ends and you begin. You have moments where you can still hear your own voice, but they occur less frequently as two merge into one. Your heart beats a steady rhythm and the two of you dance in step to it.
The loneliness that haunted you is chased away by his constant presence, comforting you in ways you'd only dreamed of. He knows your soul, sees your desires, and speaks to you in a language that only the two of you understand. At times it is terrifying, but even in those moments, it steals your breath away.
As time passes, his requests grow strange and a sense of unease grows at the deepest levels of your being. The fragmented remnants of your consciousness scream that it is all wrong, but your heart tells you otherwise. It beats loud and strong, repeating love, companionship, happiness as if it were your catechism.
You are bound together so pervasively, wound up tight enough to break.
The world turns upside down around you, but you hardly notice. A fog has crept into your vision, obscuring the unpleasant details. There are times when you can't remember where you were five minutes prior and the days start to blur into one love filled, euphoric high. You float through the world oblivious to the war being waged around you. All that matters is him.
When he is ripped away from you, you nearly die. It feels as if your body is bleeding out as his soul slowly slips from yours. You grasp frantically with your mind, but find nothing to hold on to. He is gone and so are you. Closing your eyes, you set your mind to dying with him.
Days pass and slowly you become stronger. Sometimes you think that you can almost remember who you were before him. But there are moments when the void left by his missing presence crushes you, twists you, and shapes you into something unrecognizable. His words are seared into your memory. His touch is charred into your flesh. His soul is tattooed into your every fiber.
You spend hours in the shower, trying to drown his memory under the scalding water. Welts and scratches form along your skin as you desperately attempt to scrub away his memory. You rip and tear, but you can't dig deep enough to carve him out of you. He permeates every level of you: your flesh; your cells; your blood. Writing himself into your very DNA.
Sleep is a blessing and a curse. When you dream, his presence brings you back to life, but when you wake alone in a twisted mass of damp sheets the torture starts anew. Each time, you feel your heart shrivel a little more. It still beats, but the rhythm is unsteady and feeble.
Without him, you are only a shadow of your former self. A hollow specter of the person you once were. You wish you could join the ghosts of Hogwarts, haunting the cold abandoned halls, mourning a love lost, tragic in your abandonment.
Hi there,
This story was originally posted on HPFF where it won its bracket in the first round of The Knockout Challenge. The goal of the challenge was to write a story about the dissolution of a relationship. I chose to write about Ginny and Voldemort.
I'd love to know what you thought of this, so please leave a comment if you have time!
Thank you for reading!
~Kaitlin/TreacleTart