Purgatory
Shieldmaiden wot
Chapter 1
Tears dripping onto the pages of an old leather book; the parchment welling up welcoming words in return. Her body, thinner by the day, tossing and turning in sheets strewn with hen-feathers. Lines of dripping paint that she could not wash out of her worn robes. The voice she'd never heard; the voice she'd never been able to answer. The utter cold of the stone floor on which she awoke, finally free.
Ginny awoke, heart pounding. Sitting in the soft darkness of her four-poster bed, mercifully feather-free, she sank her head in her hands. She had a headache, insidious, creeping up from her tingling spine.
She was not persuaded she would ever be free.
It had been five years and still she woke up at least once a month, pyjamas sodden with sweat, pulse pounding in her throat. It had been five years and she still could not look at snakes or pass that bathroom without a shudder and an icy feeling in her chest. It had been five years and she still felt flutters when her dark-haired saviour walked by or crossed her thoughts.
Or should she say, her saviours. Because while she couldn't shake a certain messy-haired, green-eyed boy from her mind, nor could she purge his sleek, dark-eyed rival from her dreams. Or were they nightmares?
You were a fool then and you're a fool now, she told herself sternly. The tears threatened to well up again, prickles in her eyes. You were young, she told herself, more gently this time, slumping back to the mattress and tugging the covers more tightly around her shoulders, broader and stronger now from years of Quidditch. You're still young. None of us are old enough for this.
Sometimes, privately, she mourned the loss of the first boy who had loved her. She knew now, of course, that she had merely been his pawn, a tiny pawn with flame-red hair and a wrung, piteous heart. But still, the words had to mean something. The tenderness, the sweetness – before it was poisoned by the growing understanding that something was sickeningly, frighteningly wrong.
She had flung herself into her new life with uncharacteristic boldness. She had grown taller, flintier, a little more heartless. She had breezed through a series of boyfriends. People began treating her a little less like glass, a little less like a child. She became, at least, capable of talking to Harry. She built up her arsenal of hexes, knowing it was only so long before the coming war re-enveloped her in a wash of blood. She continued to hear things at night; Tom's words, Harry's voice. Serpents.
She kissed Harry, and felt like an eleven-year-old again, welcomed by an older, wiser, wearier soul. She was a little shaken, but it did not stop her kissing him again that summer.
When the first signs came, the nightmares stopped. The trio left on a mission that could, finally, be lethal. The Malfoy ferret looked paler, shakier, every day. Her brothers scattered, most to join the resistance, one to cower in the Ministry. The seventh child, training every moment with the Army, would soon be fighting her own war.
Punching and spinning her way through the drills, shooting newer and more powerful hexes, conjuring her stallion Patronus; wondering, Have I banished him at last?
Tom never featured in her dreams any more. But neither did Harry. The cherished words, the adored voice, the serpents – all were gone.
Disclaimer: I do not own J.K. Rowling's books or characters; I just play in her world.
Please review!
This is not a songfic, but I was listening to Any Other World by Mika when composing this chapter.