White Picket Fences
by Nyx
Censored strong PG
*
"You've told me to what to turn my back on; what, my darling,
can I face?"
--Tess Slesinger, _The Unpossessed_
*
I've always felt... crushed... by everyone around me.
It's a simple fact of my life, something that just is. I'm the little girl they like to protect, the delicate flower that must be cut off from the world by white picket fences. It's a pretty picture, but not one I wish to continue. I'm tired of it; tired of always being just part of the company in the play of life. I want to take center stage, to really do something for once.
And now I can.
When they look back on it, they'll cry and shake their heads and say, she shouldn't've done it. But mine is not going to be a life of the white picket fences, always covering me up, always keeping me from harm. Everyone around me is dying and I am expected to do nothing, but if I prevent just one of those deaths, I will be happy. And I can, I can prevent them all. It will take just one little thing.
I walk with calm dignity into Hogwarts castle. I have escaped my protectors, my jailers. You will never forgive me, brother; yet if I did not do this, I could not forgive myself. It is easy to reach the Great Hall, and I know what I will find there. I can feel the darkness, even from two hundred feet away from the door. It's as though someone has scraped out the warmth from the air, removed the laughter and chatter and happiness, and left nothing to fill the void but dark. It sends a shiver to my soul. Is this what they were afraid of? Me understanding, finally, what really was wrong with Lord Voldemort and Slytherin House?
I'm not afraid to say the name anymore. I've often heard it said that to defeat your foe you must not be afraid of him. This absence of fear is a good omen, I think.
The door creaks open. Inside - inside, there you are: my brother, my friends, people who I bear no ill will for wanting to keep me safe. But I'm older now, and I've come to save them for once. "What are you doing?" I hear a voice say, and I am not sure who it was. Their voices have begun to all sound alike when they talk to me. I keep walking, feeling goosebumps begin to form. It is cold in here.
"Saving the world," I reply. Melodramatic, but fitting as my feet make clicking noises on the stone floor and the room becomes silent. Ahead of me is my goal: a boy, dark hair, taller than he was when I last saw him. Voldemort's form has aged - rather, he has aged it, liking the twenties better than fifteen. "Tom," I whisper. "At last, we meet again."
Melodrama again. I don't particularly care.
Tom looks like Harry. I realize that with a start as I pull my wand from my belt, bracing my feet and breathing deeply. Can I really do this? Can I really hurt something, even something that hurt me, so badly that it crawls back into the abyss from whence it came to lick its wounds and slowly die? I have to. I committed to that when I stepped inside the room.
"This time you don't come out of it," I continue. "Last time it wasn't really you that was killed. Now it will be." From the pocket in my robes, I pull out the long, curved basilisk fang that had saved my life in the Chamber of Secrets. I have dipped it in the poison from the arrow-frogs in the Amazon: not as potent as its original venom, but potent enough to kill me. Or anyone, for that matter. I let him and every other person in the room see it.
Then, with a deep breath and an unsteady hand, I prick my finger with its razor-sharp point. A drop of liquid crimson balances on it, then drips to the floor.
"Only a weapon that has tasted the blood of an innocent can kill evil, Tom," I say. He knows that it is already too late for him. I can feel my feet turning to lead, and I imagine my heart pumping the poison to every part of my body. "And so I will kill you."
He doesn't even try to run. Funny, I think. Perhaps I won't kill him with this; perhaps it will only be a fascimile of him that I ruin, and he will come back as he has before. I don't mind, not with death staring me in the face, and I walk up to him almost casually and stab the fang through his heart.
The blood rushes, staining me dark red. The only thing I can think to do is to lay down, so I may be saved the indignity of falling as I die. My firey hair is tangled from the heavy, sticky life-blood, but I can't feel it anymore.
And so I leave the earth. But I did it.
I broke down my white picket fences.
*fini 1/1
Disclaimer : Nobody you recognize is mine. They're JKR's.
Sequels : Nyx does not do sequels.
Feedback : Feedback is dearly loved at nyxfics@hotmail.com
Note : This story was meant to inspire your imagination (as always), and although I wrote from Ginny's perspective, with a little tweaking the story could be about Ron or even Hermione. Or Neville! :)