Author's Note: Erm, hi, all you lovely people...Um, yes I know I'm technically supposed to be working on Dancing Life, but I'm nearly finished with Chapter 22, so deal with it. I really hope you like this...it's told in Ginny's POV, and she's about 26 when she's reciting this...it's finished in about an hour, so back to Dancing Life. (Whip cracks over head.) Back to work. Damn Nazi Reviewers...
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine but plot and itty bitty baby Gingersnap. All else is J.K. Rowling's.
Nine Years in Hell
Ten Years...and Then Some.
Ten years ago I was in my sixth year at Hogwarts, School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Ten years ago I was just an innocent little girl…sweet sixteen and all that jazz. Ten years ago, it was 'all that jazz'…life was so unbelievable and fast-paced and everyone moved together and apart, back and forth like dancers in a complicated routine of steps and twirls and dips and spins. Ten years ago, life moved quickly and wildly in no fixed pattern, slowing to a crawl and racing back to a momentous whirl of adolescent emotions and feelings unexplainable for even the most astute philosophers of our time, or indeed any. Ten years ago I was just a kid, living life as I wanted to.
Nine years ago, things were a bit different, though in a sense, almost exactly the same…though doesn't it just seem like a dream? Nine years ago was like ten years ago, but now I was a dancer in that rhythmic jazz ensemble of people I had deemed clinically unhinged. Nine years ago I fell in love. Nine years ago, you may ask…well, wasn't I in love with Harry Potter? Nine years ago…no, that was twelve years ago, a totally different story. Nine years ago, I wasn't infatuated with the handsome wizard who seemed so untouchable and sacrosanct that I wasn't worthy to be in his presence. Nine years ago I fell in love…hard. Nine years ago I fell in love with the worst person imaginable. Nine years ago, if you'd been there and had to pick one person to be crowned as Unadulterated Evil, you would have chosen the same person I did…but for me, I chose him as my love.
Eight years ago, I was out of Hogwarts. Eight years ago I moved in with my love, Draco Malfoy. Eight years ago my family disowned me…well, not technically, but if you count kicking me out with no money and burning my letters as disowning me…yeah, they did. Eight years ago my life took a complete 180 turnaround. Eight years ago life as I knew it went pear shaped, topsy-turvy, and completely upside down. Eight years ago I was some pitiable figurine in an abstract painting, unrecognizable and twisted into something completely unidentifiable in relation to the girl I used to be. Eight years ago, everyone left me; Ron stopped speaking to me, utterly disgusted and sickened, Harry turned his back on me after some of the harshest words ever to touch my ears, Hermione wept many bitter tears before finally throwing me out of her apartment, Colin moved away to France, even though we'd always talked about living next door to each other for company, and Lavendar sent back every single letter and gift I'd ever sent her. Eight years ago, even though I was with the love of my life, I was broken and alone. Eight years ago, I had thought I could live on love alone, as it was proposed in cheesy paperback romance novels. Eight years ago…maybe I was still just a little girl with fantastically skewed ideals. Eight years ago…perhaps I was wrong.
Seven years ago I sought a way to fill up the emptiness that had consumed my life in the absence of family and friends. Seven years ago I began to smoke to attract interesting and diverse people to make new acquaintances. Seven years ago, when that failed and I was hooked on cigarettes I began to drink to drown out all the pain. Seven years ago, I was stuck on nicotine and alcohol, but I was in love. Seven years ago, I shoved aside my better intentions. Seven years ago, I slept with Draco Malfoy. Seven years ago, I though I was fixing the aching hole in my heart. Seven years ago, I just made an even bigger one.
Six years ago, I started to drink, heavier than before. Six years ago I began to lean heavier on Draco, depending on him as though he was my cigarettes, as though he was a bottle of numbing alcohol. Six years ago, maybe I was addicted to Draco. Six years ago, Draco and I began to sleep together more and more often. Six years ago, I was still empty, even with Draco in our most intimate moments. Six years ago I began to play the piano again…hell I needed something to fill my time; Draco was always away on these long 'business' trips. Six years ago, I played with the ferocity of betrayal and treachery burning in my fingers, performing music of fire and pain. Six years ago I found Draco's other love. Six years ago, I ran into Pansy Parkinson again…pseudonym: Draco's Shag Buddy. Six years ago…the pain was so overpowering that it still drowns me now, six years later. Six years ago, my love burned yet another hole in me. Six years ago, the emptiness was crippling.
Five years ago, Draco and I fought many times. Five years ago, I begged myself to leave him. Five years ago, I was still screwing him…hell, there's no need for sensitivity…he was a dirty scumbag- he was insensitive. Five years ago, I had grown up, but I still clung desperately to the shredded and torched fragments of my idea of love. Five years ago, I just couldn't leave him. Five years ago we fought and screamed and went back in forth. Five years ago I loved him and hated him in a dizzying tumult of unanticipated turn-of-events, new waves of love, and lustful desires. Five years ago I nearly drove myself insane with my unending but unintelligible love for Draco.
Four years ago, Draco was still seeing Pansy. Four years ago, I discovered that he was seeing many other women as well, and I don't mean in the social sense…more in the quick-fuck sense, as horrid as it may seem…that's life. Four years ago at least, that was my life. Four years ago, that was our life. Four years ago, I was still sleeping with him…I just really couldn't leave him…he was all I had left after all, wasn't he? Four years ago, my so-called-friends introduced me to a new method of drowning. Four years ago I started doing drugs…you'd be amazed at the amount of illogical society-crazy snobs that fix onto the stuff. Four years ago, I was alive again. Four years ago I didn't care if my life was a fabricated display that existed only in the amalgam of fantastical and whimsical ideals and motions and thoughts. Four years ago, the thoughts counted just as much as the actions, much more so because there was an astounding plethora more of the ideas, because I spent the last six years building them up and circumscribing them to the way I wished them to be…the way I wished life to be. Four years ago, the drugs made me able to live my thoughts and ideas, to make them actions. Four years ago, my life revolved around Draco (and our under-the-cover interludes), cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs, of which I did whatever I could…whatever it took to keep me in that blissful state of deceptive illusion in which I lived to escape the cold, hard truth-I'd fucked up…badly. Four years ago, I screwed my life over.
Three years ago, I was exhausted. Three years ago, I was so trapped in that fictitious globe of another plane of existence that emerged only in the consecrated confines of my highly confused and drug-addled mind that I didn't appreciate the toll this induced façade was taking on me. Three years ago, I began to be disenchanted with the drugs…to be specific, this lie was no longer fooling me enough to live in. Three years ago Draco came home, to stay permanently. Three years ago, I though life was perking up again. Three years ago, I was wrong again. Three years ago, my pain reached an unparalleled new level. Draco was threatening to leave me for the reason that I had walked into our bedroom to find that he was exactly alone in the bed. Three years ago, my town, battered, punctured and burnt heart broke into uncountable pieces. Three years ago I resorted back to drugs…Draco liked me more when I was on drugs. Three years ago, I didn't know whether or not I liked myself on drugs…
Two years ago, I went mad. Two years ago, the drugs just weren't enough. Two years ago I was terrified of myself; I talked to mirror-images of me, I ranted and raved in the middle of the night, sleeping at random and unpredictable times, and never peacefully; my dreams were punctuated with horrors and pains of indescribable magnitudes; I screamed myself awake sometimes, until my lungs felt ready to burst, and my throat bloody and raw. Two years ago I was a nervous mess of twitches and tics…my body simply would not stop shaking. Two years ago my eyes were no longer my eyes…the eyes I saw in the mirrors (that I later brutally shattered with my bare hands) were not mine, but belonged to some unknown barbaric savage with primitive and murderous thoughts running rampant through blood-shot eyes diffused with burst vessels triggered by the hardships and taxations of a life lived in self-fear and self-deprecation, deprived of the only comforting matter of life. Two years ago I lived in the shadows, peering out with those unrecognizable eyes into a world I didn't identify as the one I'd left…a world that I was seeing for the first time, with those eyes that were not mine. Two years ago I tried to get out of that world, because the reality hurt more than anything that had preceded it. Two years ago, I tried to kill myself…several times. Two years ago I beseeched the pills to work, the knife to cut, the rope to seize the ruined life of mine, rip it away however violently and throw it far, far away…whether or not I survived it, I didn't care…I just wanted to break away.
One year ago I was still alive and I wasn't alone. One year ago, Draco had left…but he had left something else with me besides drug debts. One year ago Draco left something inside me that was swelling up, enlarging my stomach most grotesquely. One year ago I stopped screaming…though the echoes of prior cries reverberated forever more in my head. One year ago I was reading novels…though most of them I ripped to shreds in fits and furies that burned and pained in flashed of white heat and insurmountable agony that left me in tears and doubled over my huge belly. One year ago, I was off drugs…though their absence nearly killed me several times. One year ago, I was playing the piano again…though my music was searing and of insignificant comfort, not the pleasurable escape that it had once been. One year ago, I was cooking my own meals again…though from time to time I was compelled to touch some part of my shell (that is to say, my vacant body) to the intensely blistering flame. One year ago, I was healing again…though sometimes it was physical…as I certainly couldn't go around with all those ugly lacerations and burns. One year ago, I was feeling again, and no just the pain. One year ago, I started to feel some things I'd never expected to feel again. One year ago, I sold Draco's apartment (as it was mine as well) and moved to a quaint little flat in London, near my twin brother's central joke shop. One year ago, I began to feel truly loved again, something I hadn't felt in almost nine years…of course it would be the twins who would welcome me back with identical open arms; they were always the most understanding and tolerable of my family. One year ago, I painted the walls of my flat sky blue, emerald green, sunshine yellow, and pastel purple, colors that I felt again; colors that were tangible and real, not imagined or fake. One year ago I began to live in the real world again, and I felt how wonderful and amazing it was…One year ago, I was (in a manner of speaking) born again, a new soul in the hollow shell that I was starting to recognize, a phoenix rising from the ashes of a life touched by pain and agony and death and flames.
One year ago, I was Ginevra Aurelia Weasley again.
Now we come to present day. Or almost…there is a minute amount of that past that needs reviewing…and this is much less excruciating. It's actually the most uplifting thing ever to touch my renewed interior.
Yesterday I gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
Yesterday, I was rushed to the hospital by my adoring twin brothers. Yesterday, the doctors tried to put me under medication for the birth, but I refused…I'll never ever have anything to do with drugs of any type or form. Yesterday after nine hours of pain (dulled in comparison to the years leading up to my "death") I felt a wave of release and heard a cry. Yesterday, the cry of an infant closer to my heart than the person who put her there woke up something that had fallen under the crumbling debris of my failed and broken heart. Yesterday, as I held my darling little child in my arms for the first time…I felt love. Yesterday I felt love for another being…love that surpassed any feeble feeling I'd ever had for Draco, who I'd nearly died for. Yesterday, I decided that if this was the result of those nine years of hell, perhaps they were worth it, because now the pain's over. Yesterday, my brothers stood beside me and looked down at their niece, Gingersnap Aurelia Weasley. Yesterday, a little babe with gingersnap-colored hair looked up at me with cocoa eyes…eyes that I recognized, for the first time in years since I smashed their image in my mirror. Yesterday, I looked down at my daughter and smiled.