1.
They told you, Ginny Weasley.
They told you you're strong and brave, so strong and brave, the strongest, the bravest, you're the wind through the branches and water slipping into earth, and you can do this
you can do this
you can do this.
Why couldn't you just do it, Ginny Weasley?
2.
You're so fragile, you think, if you ran into glass, you'd be the one who'd shatter.
3.
Once upon a time, you set a monster loose and watched the world as it prepared to burn.
It fell like a waterfall around you, a thing of beauty, wild and tempestuous, unraveled, and you couldn't take your eyes off it anymore.
He would've taken your soul, they told you later, and you nod and don't say, don't say he had had, that he never gave it back either.
4.
He didn't, he didn't, but there's something in you, there is, there is, it clinks when you move, and crinkles with your laughter and smoothes and settles and fits when you don't want it to fit. It does.
There's something inside you, yes.
it's not a soul
it's not a soul
it's not a soul.
5.
You don't know what it is.
(do you?)
6.
He bartered.
You had a string in your heart back then and he had long fingers, lovely, lovely fingers with neatly cut nails and skin soft and cold like alabaster, and he found it.
He played you like a violin and you liked it.
7.
He looked into you and liked you as much as anyone can ever like a tool.
But he liked you.
No one has ever liked you since the way Tom Riddle's inkish words did. You might miss it if you're not careful enough.
You might drown in it like in liquefied glass.
8.
He spills into you, fits your crevices and niches, cuddles in your ribcage, nestles in your lungs, opens office in the back of your mind and settles in.
(it's not a soul
It's just a fragment.)
9.
You're never careful enough.
You're a Gryffindor and they broke the mold after they (re)made you. You're all wild hair and wilder eyes, all rage and no purpose, all anguish.
There are people in and out of you daily and they look like watercolors, abstract and blurry, and you just seek them out so not to be alone.
You're the leader but you'd do anything. Anything. Anything.
Not that you're ever truly alone, anyway.
10.
The crux of the matter is that you let him and they can never find out.
You knew and it ate at you, so young and naïve, so socially inept it would've hurt given the chance.
But he cared
as much as anyone can ever care about a tool and you thought it was enough
And you let him.
11.
It's all on you, Ginny Weasley.
12.
You're on you, anyway, because nobody truly ever died the way you did back then. They fell like statues of marble to the ground, then lifted off and dusted off and wandered on. You were pushed upright by a boy with Tom Riddle in his eyes, shoved to stand, pushed to be, but you're still lying on that floor, helpless, little and betrayed, just as ever.
How do you walk, Ginny Weasley?
How do you talk, Ginny Weasley?
You're dead, dead, dead, have you seen a mirror, reflections don't lie and yours is all sharp cheeks and sinful smile, all Slytherin.
You can never be again.
You're on you. Forever.
13.
Once upon a time, a monster's shackles came loose at your feet and you liked him. You'd have held his sky forever had he asked you.
14.
They told you you were strong and brave, so strong and brave, the strongest, the bravest, you're the wind through the branches and water slipping into earth and you can do this
you can do this
you can do this.
You don't want to do it, Ginny Weasley.
I don't know where this came from. It just did. Let's call it an incursion in Ginny's mind and be done with it.