This is a Draco/Ginny fic.
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Dark Mark's Daughter
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Prologue
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Four walls closing all around here
Breathless, restless, terrified
Can't see out, can't feel in realtime
No escape from the inside;
I scream for help, it's quiet still
I break the walls to no avail
I still can't face this cold enclosure
My darkest fears know that I'll fail;
And I am trapped, I'm lost forever
Drenched with ice and shaking so
And he just watches, cool impassive,
Breathes the deadly music's flow...
And he danced to the rhythm of my deepest secrets
Danced to the music of my darkest fears
Danced with a smile insane and lovely
Danced while he saw me dying here.
Voices echo through the hallway
Cannot hear a word they say
My question met with cold refusal
Soft psychosis here to stay;
I shout for reason, run and hide
I see salvation, cannot call
Madness speaks a million visions
and I see, I feel them all;
And I am crying to their rhythm
The beat awry, alive, askance
And I am joining in the music
I am joining in the dance.
And he danced to the rhythm of my deepest secrets
Danced to the music of my darkest fears
Danced with a smile insane and lovely
Danced while he saw me dying here.
One of the many tears that Ginevra Weasley shed that night stained the dusty tear of parchment that bore the word she'd written a year ago tonight. A small pile of shredded parchment lay beside her, and in front of her an old and torn box of thin cardboard, hardly durable, but then again, neither were the contents. Shredding each piece of parchment one by one, her eyes and cheeks gleamed where tears had touched her soft, pale, freckled skin, and her eyes and face glowing brilliantly under the reflection of the common room fire.
But this piece of parchment she didn't shred. For a moment she held it, lost in silent thought; in silent misery. Then, a forlorn smile breaking through her wall of unsuppressed tears, she folded it in half and placed it in her robe pocket. Bill had once told her that any kind experience should be kept a memory, whether it was good or bad. Her smile now diminished and faded, she picked up the next piece of parchment, which she angrily tore in half, and threw into the fire in front of her, watching hungry tongues of golden fire swallow the memory up.
Her mind flashed back to Bill, her own brother. Her own brother, she repeated in her mind. He had done that to her own brother, and it was because of him, the Dark Lord, that Bill had lain unconscious for three days already in the sterilized and sickening hospital of St. Mungo's, and his fault that she had received twice as much news from her family from outside Hogwarts as she ever did in three weeks, let alone three days. And all news was depressing.
It was the factor needed to set off everything miserable that had happened in her life; the last thing she could handle. The truth tore at her, from every limb at her body, and half her mind urged her to put an end to it all. But she was stronger than that. She hadn't lived through the last year to turn out just as weak as before. No, she had been through it to come out strong.
The tear trails down her face burnt as if on fire, and the pit of hungry flames begged for more. Tears are not the product of weakness, Ginny had learnt. Only to surrender yourself to life's punishments ensured your weakness. Ginny would not do that. Not now. Those days had gone. She had grown since then, and she was strong. She would not surrender.
It had been an agreement. He would not harm those whom she loved. He had broken that promise. He treated her like a little girl arguing over which of them owned her doll. 'You do not love him.' He had told her; ordered her. Shredding up more parchment, faster and more forcefully than before, Ginny held the anger she held inside her, trying to subside it, but it only would grow. Who was he to tell her whom she loved?
She did love Bill. She may have turned against her family, that included him, but she had done it on her own means. She hadn't turned enemy on her family. She had always been distant from them, but that did not mean she did not love them.
'You do not know what love is.' The Dark lord had then preached, like a teacher starting a lecture because she'd complained about how he graded her work. She had asked him for the true meaning of love, unafraid of questioning him. She knew that he would, if he wanted, put an end to the life of any Death Eater who questioned his ways, almost instantly. She had watched, as he, like a puppeteer, playing with his puppets, played death upon those who even dared.
But she wasn't afraid. And he seemed proud of her for that. She had always been daring, and strong-willed; determined. It had seemed, though he was not one who was at all predictable. He had said to her, as she knelt at his feet, 'If you knew what true love was, you would not be here.'
Well he was right. She had joined then, when she did not understand, nor realize, how many people loved her. But now she did. She had finished her association with the Dark Lord. She'd no longer be one of them, and she would no longer bow down at his honour. She once thought joining the Dark Lord would free her from whatever dark clutches held her, but now she knew better. Freedom is a life where there's no one there to tell you what is right, and what is wrong, something which is not obtainable under the eye of Lord Voldemort.
And though her own skin must bear his mark, and it would grasp at her soul and try to pull her back to what she once was, he could no longer tell her what to do. She was her own body and own self, and for once she understood the meaning of love. Love is defined by the beholder, and love he could not truly define. And as determined and stubborn as she had been for him, she would now be against him.
Ginny picked up the last material possession which was there to remind her of what would now lay behind her, a work and dusty old book, with an emerald green figure of art pictured on the front – The Dark Mark.
She held it up in front of her, and with the reflections of the fire playing shapes across her face, said angrily but clearly:
'You don't know what love is.'
Her cinnamon eyes burnt with the familiar vividness that anyone who had dared anger her knew, as she tore the book in half, focusing all the anger inside her out, to throw it into the flames, let it burn and subside, to set her free from the web the Dark Lord had her tangled inside, and she proclaimed her newfound fortitude.
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Poem belongs to purrverse of The full version can be found there.
Well I don't know what it's like, really, so please take the time to review. Advice, suggestions and ways in which I can improve are most welcome )
Draco will be introduced in the next chapter. I just had to introduce this bit in the prologue as I believe it to be critical to my storyline.
Review??
Edited on 4th January 2005.