Warnings: mentions of attempted rape.
On the top of her falling tower, on those few moments of silence, on one of the many moments of solitude, she looks away, into the sun, into the horizon, and whishes, whishes, whishes.
One day I'll fly away, she thinks as she steals brooms and races the wind when nobody is looking.
One day I'll be known and happy and free, she thinks to herself as her mother screams, things blow up and Bill, and Charlie and all of them, one by one, leave.
She wants it now, but she's willing to wait for one day.
(sometimes, in her bed, when there's only night and silence and something-missing, she wonders if it will ever come)
O.0.o.o.0.O
Tom comes and changes everything.
(except no, not really, not everything)
He's wonderful and beautiful and he sees her.
(he doesn't love her, but she's had that, and it's not enough)
He's also too cruel, too smart, too heartless.
(and maybe she loves him for it)
He betrays her and tries to kill her, except she gives him her soul and life long before he tries, long before he asks.
(because she's fighting and he's slipping away, and if she doesn't fight anymore, he won't – she's not ready to give up being seen)
Harry saves her, her father is disappointed, her mother is sobbing. She is happy.
(no, not at all, but is what they see, what they believe, and her scars and fears and regrets fade away into the darkness all the forgotten things go)
Life moves on and she is dragged with it, scarred and older, but still wishing.
O.0.o.o.0.O
There's Michael, there's Dean, there's War.
Michael tastes of awkwardness and firsts and mistakes, the sweet type, ones you will remember fondly twenty years from now. He leaves as she grows and leaving him, much like having him, makes her feel young and whole and beautiful.
Dean makes her beautiful drawings and she keeps them all under her bed, but he treats her as if she'll break, because of what happened in her first year.
(she gets tired, too tired, of being weak and little and pathetic and, for all his love, he doesn't understands her)
War is pain, fighting, losing and pretending everything is going to be all right. Dumbledore dies and they still try to pretend.
On Hogwarts, the students scream and there are scars on her back from curses she can't name and she sleeps many nights on the Requirement Room, tired after a day of fighting and planning to fight.
(there's something familiar in that room, something that reaches to her soul, that makes her think of Tom and maybe, just a little, Harry)
Dean smiles at her like he means it and there's something like respect and admiration in his eyes, as if he sees a woman, not a little girl.
She can't smile, but, sometimes, she looks back.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Oh. And there's Harry.
Sweet, clueless, stubborn, stupid Harry.
He kisses her in front of everybody and breaks up with her to protect her.
(she probably needs it, but he's so self-centered and naïve if he thinks he can save her)
He adores her family and adores her and, if it wasn't for the war and his past with it, he would have been the perfect boyfriend.
(except, except, except, maybe, actually a little more than maybe, he loves her family more than he loves her, and he loves the youngest, sweet, beautiful child more than he loves her)
He wants the fairytale life her parents and the world think she's going to have, with the house, the flowers and the pretty children.
(but she wants to fly and these things bind her to the ground in more ways than one)
She loves him, because she simply does, because you don't choose these thinks.
(if you could… she thinks and never completes the thought)
He loves her.
(doesn't understand her, though, not at all)
O.0.o.o.0.O
In between Tom and Harry, Percy leaves.
She's mad and betrayed and how dares he leaves them, especially now?
(but he's following his dreams and looking for people that will see and understand him, and not just blindly love him)
O.0.o.o.0.O
One day, the pain is too much. The Carrows are evil, her body hurts, her soul hurts. The War is taking too much from all of them – it's already starting to steal some light from Luna's eyes and that's more than she can handle.
And Dean is there, Dean who draws her and looks at her as if he realizes where they went wrong.
And they sleep together and it's really not making love but it's not just sex either.
(it might be a broken thing but it's not all sad)
(it's her first and, somewhere - maybe not far at all, maybe in the Requirement Room itself - Tom is either angry or smiling)
So she stays in his arms for awhile, closes her eyes, pretends, just for a moment. They both know is not going to last, but those were dark times, and nobody was in a hurry.
(later, she'll hold his dead, broken body in her arms and, if she doesn't cry, she doesn't throw away any of his drawings either).
O.0.o.o.0.O
Ginny is tired because she won't let herself go.
So she sleeps with Dean, plans fighting, tries surviving and never once attempts to kill the Carrows in their sleep.
She won't let herself cross that invisible line that has always been there, but never so bright, so tempting.
(she doesn't even no who drew it – her family, Harry, the school, the entire world…?)
Every spells she casts it's half of what she wants it to be and every feeling is numb.
She won't let go, because if she does, something will break, or mend or be set free – it will spread and it will go wherever it wants to go and she fears it, because she does not know what it is.
(and it might be Tom and it might be something else altogether)
O.0.o.o.0.O
Luna and Neville become her lifelines. She depends on them, her best friends, her companions, her equals.
They're both broken and hurt, from long before the War, but she thinks it makes them all more wonderful.
People call them the Silver Trio and she laughs, a real laugh, one of the few she gives these days.
Luna is taken away and she leaves and Neville is hurt almost beyond recognition.
The War destroys. It takes everything. Slowly, it takes bits of her strength and fire and, maybe, actually a little more than maybe, her sanity.
(she swallows pills and barely eats and brushes her hair until her head almost bleeds)
(but still won't let her herself go)
O.0.o.o.0.O
Percy comes back.
Loneliness can be a very painful thing.
O.0.o.0.O
She doesn't what people think she talked about with Tom, but she knows it wasn't the truth.
Because the truth? They talked about love, life, death, pain, war, music and stars.
Tom named the stars for her, told their stories (and she had straight O's in Astronomy every year in Hogwarts). Tom played the piano on her head and taught her to play his favorite song, a beautifully broken melody, that is dark when Tom plays it and sad when she does.
Tom told her about the War, about the Death Eaters, about Voldemort, all the things nobody would tell her. And she told him about love. Tom had asked her 'what is love?' because he truly did not know, because Tom Riddle was a lot of things and curious was one of them.
She paused.
And answered: "Love is looking at the stars and touching them without leaving the ground - is to look around and know you're searching for something and not just drifting."
(maybe a little too deep for an eleven year-old, but she aged what Tom couldn't in those few, precious months)
(but then again, maybe just an over-used cliché)
In the end, at the Chamber, as he stands before her, she says:
"I don't think anybody really knows what love is, Tom. We just feel it."
Tom waits, because she never quite decided on death either. And, as death whispers its arrival to her, she says:
"I don't think it matters how it is - just that it comes. It always comes."
Tom doesn't believe her. Looking at his eyes, Ginny thinks he should.
O.0.o.o.0.O
She looks at Harry and he looks at her.
She loves that boy (not a man, not yet, no matter what they say) so much and she wishes things were easier.
(she wishes she didn't)
He dies and it almost kills her.
(he comes back to her and there are tears of joy on her face and for a moment she believes in beauty and goodness and love again)
He wins the war and it's great and wonderful.
(but the fight isn't over, it will never be, and the scars and the pain and the loss can never be taken back, maybe not even healed)
O.0.o.o.0.O
Fred dies.
Dies. Dies. Dies.
(diesdiesdiesdiesdiesleaveshergonegonegone)
He just…
Fred.
Just…
Dies.
O.0.o.o.0.O
She goes to the Requirement Room.
It's not there anymore. The feeling.
It's not on Harry either.
It's gone and it will never come back.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Time… passes.
Bill organizes the funeral, because he's Bill, so of course he does.
(he breaks down one day and Fleur holds him tight and traces his scars with her fingertips, her blond hair covering his face, protecting him from the world)
George doesn't cry. Doesn't laugh. Doesn't do anything, really.
She knows how he feels.
In the funeral and the following weeks she refuses to be touched.
"When my mother died" Luna says, with her eyes slowly becoming bright again and her far-away smile "I didn't speak for two weeks".
When she breaks down, it's Luna who holds her, and she falls asleep in her best friend's arms, as the blonde hums lullabies she never heard, from the land Luna lives in and none of them can ever go.
(but, for a moment, she feels she's there and thinks that maybe, actually a little more than maybe, she can heal)
O.0.o.o.0.O
She goes back to Hogwarts.
She didn't want to - she and her mother had screamed themselves horses because Ginny wouldn'tcouldn't go back, but her mother didn't listen, it was all jobs and futures and plans.
"The war is over and you're going to live a normal life and that includes school!"
Molly doesn't understand - she wants, more than anything, to be free from the war, but Hogwarts won't help with it.
Her mother does not understand, and Ginny cannot bring herself to explain it to her.
(because, once, a lot of scars ago, Ginny had been broken and sad and betrayed and her parents had said "we taught you better than that" - and she had taught that no, maybe they hadn't, but had kept quiet and let them forget her fear and sadness and pain)
O.0.o.o.0.O
Potions is where she remembers crucio. It's where that seventh year Slytherin, looking as scared as she, had first pointed his wand at her and said the words.
As she reads her book, and hears the professor, she remembers a thousand knifes and the feeling of having her soul torn apart.
(she would know)
Transfiguration is Carrow - is where he put scars on her back, from curses and his knife, and tore her shirt apart, gripping her breast and ass until there were marks from his hands. He had whispered, "if only your blood wasn't so dirty..." and she had felt his erection through his pants and cried.
(he never raped her, but that almost still haunts her)
Every corridor is the one Fred died and every shadow is Greyback scaring Bill. Peeves laughs and pranks, but it seems hollow now and reminds her of Bellatrix's broken laugh.
Astronomy is Tom, as it had always been.
And graduation - after N.I.E.M.s, tears, hugging and congratulations - feels like breaking free, like starting over, like a blank page.
(like one from a diary, long ago, white pages begging to be stained)
'I'll heal' she thinks and believes.
O.0.o.o.0.O
To heal she flies.
Flies as fast as she can, across mountains and rivers and people. She feels the wind, hears her own heartbeat, feels alive and breathes.
(she hadn't breathed in a long time)
One day, she manages to get a job at the Harpies.
The wind bows, the sun dims, the stars watch and she's queen of her world.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Victoire is the first baby and a beautiful one. As the girl grows and learns to smile and laugh, she falls more and more in love with her niece, that sweet little girl who loves her family above everything in the world and enchants them all with her words.
"You're wonderful – you're going to go places and do things and enchant the world" she holds the girl closer, and smilessmilessmiles.
"You'll be free" she promises and it's a lie as much as it is a truth.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Things with Harry go… well, they don't go.
Not at first. In the beginning he barely touches her, partly because of he chooses not, partly because she averts him. He helps Ron and Hermione and hangs around, close enough for comfort without fear.
(she thinks they can work, he's starting to get her, to figure it out, and he's going to let her heal)
But then things go. Fast.
When she starts playing Quiddich, he shows up and kisses her and things go from there.
(she's still too tired and broken and in love with him to fight it)
And one year passes and she's still not fixed, when he asks her to marry him.
"I love you" he says and he means it.
(doesn't see her)
(not enough)
She cries as she says yes and he kisses her tears away.
(they still come)
O.0.o.o.0.O
He wants to tell her family first, of course, especially Ron and Hermione because they're their best friends.
(not mine, she wants to say, but doesn't, because-)
She still goes to see Luna and Neville first and lets Harry talk to her family, because, really, she owns them.
They both smile, because they're kind and wonderful, but their eyes are concerned.
Neville asks her how she's been eating and Luna just stares.
"Just because you love somebody, doesn't mean you should be with them" she says, straight to point, good old Luna.
"It makes sense"she tells Luna and in her falling-apart world, that's a lot.
(because Fred's dead, she has scars and nightmares and all the flying in the world can't erase that)
She kisses her fiancé and let's her mother plan a wedding that's all Weasley and none her.
(but she stills insists Luna is the maid of honor – Hermione's eyes are hurt but she doesn't care half as much as she should).
O.0.o.o.0.O
Her mother starts smiling again, for real, her brothers' lives slowly start adjusting themselves and she gets married.
Really, the wedding is all a blur of white, smiles, tears and Luna's sunny yellow dress.
She still flies, still heals, only difference is a ring on her left hand and Harry's whispered words of future and plans she isn't sure she wants.
But, still, she's living and she means most of her smiles.
O.0.o.o.0.O
She wins a Quiddich prize.
It's beautiful and shiny and her name and smile are on a thousand newspapers.
One day I'll be known and happy and free, she remembers and laughs with her heart.
O.0.o.o.0.O
She is pregnant.
Not sure how it happened, but the healer confirms it.
Harry will be thrilled she thinks.
Puts a hand above her stomach.
There's something heavy on her chest, threatening to suffocate her, and she almost cries.
She thinks of her baby, beautiful and young and innocent.
I failed you already.
(something's shifting, her life, she thinks, and the invisible weight takes her breath away and she suddenly thinks of a lonely childhood and the feeling of never being seen or understood)
(I'm supposed to fix myself. Before anything, before even thinking on having another life depend on her, she needed to stop depending so much on everything else – Tom, Harry, her family, the wind, her friends, a dead brother that won't come back)
(and, she realizes with horror, she's not fixed. Not at all)
(will I ever be?)
O.0.o.o.0.O
Harry almost cries.
Starts planning everything and 'we have tell your mother' and it's godparents and it's sex and name and, and, and…
He mentions, in passing, that it would be best if she got a job with flexible time, to make it easier, and she realizes, for the first time, she's going to have to quit the team.
Even after she has the baby, it will need attention and she can't be a mother and travel across the globe for competitions at the same time.
(she doesn't want to be a mother. It hits her then, except she already knew, has known for a long time, and now she's having a baby she doesn't want, what, really, already makes her the worst mother)
(she'll love this baby and she'll hate that she does and oh, wasn't Tom that said, so long ago - or maybe just yesterday - you could have been a queen, Ginevra, had you not such a pathetic need to love...)
(maybe he was right)
O.0.o.o.0.O
The baby comes screaming and crying and they give him to her.
"It's a boy" somebody says, and she doesn't really care who. She holds him close, that little creature, who she's sure is going to break if she holds him too tight.
My baby boy, my beautiful baby boy, I'm so sorry.
Because she loves him, she does, but she'll never understand him, because she'll never try, because he's pure and innocent and whole and she's not, even when she believes she is.
(Harry names him, after people he lost, and she doesn't think it's right to give such a heavy name to such a little boy, but she knows nothing of mothering, so she stays quiet)
(even if Tom had said, a long time ago - or maybe just yesterday - the difference a name can make, Ginevra, how much it can say...)
Ron and Hermione are James' godparents and she doesn't have the heart to fight it.
(what now? she thinks and holds her baby closer)
O.0.o.o.0.O
Three weeks later, Harry has a work think he can't get off and everybody's busy and it's just her and the baby.
He cries, cries and cries and she can't make it stop.
She tries singing like her mother did, talking to him, feeding him, holding him, everything, but he won't stop. She starts panicking, but James won't stop, won't, keeps crying and screaming until she's screaming right along with him.
"Why? Why won't you stop? What do you want from me?!" she pulls on her hair, angry, scared and tired.
"Just stop! Please! I know you don't want me! But there's nobody else, okay? Nobody, just me and I don't want you either…"
She breaks down, falls to the ground, but does not cry. James cries for her, and his screams are impossibly high like Mrs. Tonks when she saw her daughter's body or her own as Carrow smiled at her.
"I'm sorry, but I just can't."
She runs, then, closes the door to her room, goes through her closet until she finds the pills she hasn't had in so long, so many years, but she can't, just can't…
She swallows three at once, throws herself in the bed and puts a pillow over her head to muffle the baby's cries.
The darkness comes because it never left and she lets herself go.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Harry wakes her with a smile, kissing her softly, the baby in his arms. She must have looked confused, because he tells her she fell asleep, that the baby is fine, sleeping heavily.
He walks past her, putting James on his crib and asking her if she wants to take a shower or if he can go.
She stares at him for a long moment before saying he can go ahead.
She sits on the bed, looks around, tries to keep her head from spinning. She thinks she should cry, because, god, she's such a failure, and what would her mother say?, worse, what would Fred say?
She walks to James' crib, sits on the chair by its side.
"I'm sorry" she whispers, low, even though Harry wouldn't be able to hear it with the shower running.
(and she wonders if she screamed it, right by his side, if, even then, he would listen to it)
"I…" she stops - sighs and falls deeper into the chair.
"I don't know. I just don't know anymore".
O.0.o.o.0.O
Two days after she quits the Harpies, the Prophet calls her.
They need a writer. Someone who knows quidditch, knows people and knows the fans.
She's accepts before she realizes what she's done and they give her her first assignment.
She stares at the paper for two hours before writing anything and, when she does, is cautious and slow.
'How' she thinks 'is writing on blank paper ever going to help you let Tom go?'
It's not.
O.0.o.o.0.O
James first magic trick is to fly.
She thinks it's beautiful, and watches him for a couple of seconds, before going to get him. Harry talks excitedly, hugs her, but her eyes are on the boy.
He looked so happy above the ground.
And, maybe, that she can understand.
He laughs as he sits on the floor and forgets his adventure.
And he's lost to her again.
O.0.o.o.0.O
When she was eight, she asked her mother if everybody always had a happy ending, like in her stories.
And her mother had looked at her, and, maybe, for a second, had seen her, because her face was serious and her eyes were harsh.
(her mother knew war and pain - people tended to forget that)
But Molly smiled, her eyes unfocused, the way liars' are, and she had said, not at Ginny, but at her young, innocent, pure child.
(and maybe Ginny had been that child, then. but, than again, maybe not)
"Of course they do, darling - as long as they never forget to fight for their dreams and love those around them."
O.0.o.o.0.O
When the kids are at Hogwarts, Harry is at work and her writing is done, Ginny likes to visit Audrey.
Audrey is not, by any means, who she taught Percy would marry - too harsh, too wild, too unpredictable. Dree smiles when she sees her, like she usually smiles, as if life is a party and everyone is a little tipsy and stupid and willing to lose themselves.
And they sit together and talk about nothing, telling everyday nonsense, past mistakes and future hopes.
And, more often than not, Audrey tells her story, filled with the taste of whisky and the smell of cigarette and sex. Audrey shows Ginny her tattoos, tells her what they mean, and laughs as she tells how she stripped in France when she was running from the War, and how the man looked at her and how she let them.
Audrey regrets nothing - everything she did is part of who she is and she enjoyed her crazy life, just as she enjoys it now, with the husband and the daughters and running the orphanage for magical children.
(Tom had been at an orphanage, and Ginny likes to see all the orphans that are not he run around)
Dree had managed to pick up the pieces of her crazy life, working with George at the joke shop, meeting Percy, losing her mother.
("and-", Dree says, no shame at all, "-that was the most important one - losing her. Only when she was gone, I began to not look back and let myself be me without the guilt - even if being me meant parties, smoke, sex and booze.")
When she visits Audrey, Ginny tells her about the first time she stole a broom and about a boy in a diary she sometimes misses and the way she keeps the pills under the bed now, just in case.
And Dree smiles her beautiful smile and tells her that she still wishes she was the one dead and not her little sister and that she hated her mother.
Ginny likes to visit Audrey because it makes her thinks maybe she can be truly happy without ever healing.
O.0.o.o.0.O
(when Percy shows up, Audrey smiles at him in a way she never does, as if life is laughing and playing as sunshine drops fall)
(and Ginny is jealous, not of Audrey, who loves so completely, but of Percy, who was somebody that looks at him like that)
(when Harry looks at her, he sees peaceful night where she wanted to be blinding sunlight)
O.0.o.o.0.O
Albus is her second child and she feels she can't remember half her pregnancy.
It was all a blur of love and giggles and a pregnant Hermione.
Rose is born just a few weeks before Albus, but, still, he's second.
He acts like it too - calmer, hardly cries, doesn't call too much attention. Likes to play with her quaffle, which stays motionless in his hand instead of Harry's snitch, too fast and unpredictable for him.
She thinks she likes him better - oh, of course, she loves both her boys equally, but, still, Albus is quiet and calm, and though she is neither, she's always been able to appreciate the silence.
(her favorite moments had been at the silence, where time stood still and the world stopped moving - Tom had found her in the silence and she gave him her soul without a word)
She's busy now, with the husband, the job and two kids, but she kind of likes it, because it gives her no time no think, and, without thinking, she finds herself... content.
She isn't bright sunshine, known and happy and free, but she's calm in ways she's never been and not as much lost as resigned.
She loves her family and they don't resent her, so life can't help but be good, even if not great.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Eleven years, three months and two days after Albus is born, he's sorted into Gryffindor, despite all of his brother's teasing.
She's a little disappointed.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Lily is the third.
She's actually planned - Harry said he wanted another child and Ginny agreed because she forgot how not to and it's not long before morning sickness comes.
Hermione is pregnant too, but, this time, she's first.
And Lily comes screaming and moving, so alive Ginny loses her breath.
(Luna is her middle name and that's all her - Tom would be proud)
She hardly cries, like James did, but never stands still, like Albus did.
She's a little ball of fire and her daughter and, somehow, that changes everything.
She's walking before they know it, speaking too, and only stops both at night, when she looks at the moon and the moon looks right back at her. s
(Tom loved the stars, but the moon had been his favorite)
O.0.o.o.0.O
Eleven years, six months and fourteen days after Lily Luna is named, she's sorted into Gryffindor.
She's not as much disappointed as surprised.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Ginny adores Teddy.
She's not the godmother, but she feels like it, specially when Teddy holds her legs, buries his face in her skirt and whispers, so nobody else will listen, "I'm sad today".
He'll smile at everyone else, but, he'll hug her close and let himself be sad and angry and hurt. He's great with the kids in ways she isn't and she's good with him in ways nobody else is. She loves that boy, with his dimples, bright hair, silly smile and sad eyes.
(people sometimes say he's like Tonks, other times like Remus, but Ginny thinks he's just Teddy)
It's her – not Harry, or his grandmother, no, that moment is forever hers – that he comes to when he decides to propose to Victoire.
And Ginny smiles at him, truly, because she knows this amazing boy will make her beautiful, kind niece so very happy.
She tells him that Victoire will like it better if he buys a new ring, rather than giving her an old family one.
(she lies – her niece adores family and tradition, but Ginny wants a new start for those two, a moment in their lives without ghosts of the past to follow them)
He chooses one and their smiles blind her when they tell her they're engaged.
Ginny hugs them both and laughs, for the love and the beauty that still exist in the world and that, maybe, God, hopefully more than maybe, can last.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Ginny has many, many nephews and nieces now.
They're loud, and happy and free, even when they're not. Even as Molly cries softly, or Freddie's face darkens with doubt and Roxy's eyes blaze with anger – even then, she can see their smiles and laughter surrounding them, protecting them from darkness.
Their scars are subtle even when they're deep and they'll all heal with time.
Ginny likes watching them – likes helping Rose with Hogwarts' homework and teaching quiddich to Louis and giving Victoire tips for her writing.
It's when she's happiest, she thinks – these moments that are not hers, but theirs, new lives beginning, her loved ones, trying, winning and falling. She likes to be part of that.
It drags some of her regrets away, makes her thankful.
And, in time, as Vic wins a prize for her writing, Dominique opens her dancing club, Lucy discovers math, Louis becomes a Healer and Albus goes play quiddich, she starts breathing a little easier.
She likes to think that, somewhere, Tom is accepting, even if unhappy.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Albus absorbs the wind, flies as high as he can, and comes back happy and free.
She likes to share a look with him when he comes back to the ground, because, on those precious seconds, she thinks he understands, just a little, why her face darkens and why he found pills under her bed.
James never understands.
He saw her mixing the pills with alcohol when he was thirteen, so they would work faster, told her to stop and believed her when she told him it wasn't what he thought. He told her it made sense because his mother had no reason to be unhappy.
(Harry had whispered her name into her neck that night, a little faster and lower than usual, holding her a little tighter and it hadn't sounded like him at all, but almost like a ghost and shadow and scar)
Harry's son is as naïve as he is arrogant.
Lily might understand best of all, full of fire and passion and the need to break free even of the things that do not bind her.
Her stubborn daughter wants to heal the entire world with her words, smiles and touches.
(she can, Ginny thinks sometimes, but not the entire world, and certainly not her)
But still she tries, leaves home as soon as she can, travels the world, smiles at strangers and falls in love, everyday.
Lily finds her place on teaching, travelling on holidays, a man who loves her as if she was the sun and children that always come and always leave, that she helps find their way.
Her daughter understands pain and cruelty better than most people, saw it first hand on children's back and eyes, but her life is full of sunshine and love and hate and sorrow will always be just an inch too far. When Ginny has trouble breathing, Lily holds her hand and does not ask questions, but she has no words of comfort and her eyes are always confused.
None of her children can fully understand, but that's okay, because Ginny loves them even if she didn't want to, and wishes no pain or sorrow on their lives, even if it could make them better and stronger.
She'll leave them weak and confused, because it might be the only way to keep them happy.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Sometimes, Ginny writes Tom letters.
Dear Tom, they say, with careful writing, and then:
I love you
I hate you
I miss you
Come back
Did you ever leave?
Lily smiles and James laughs and Albus smirks and we're all reallyreally happy, so happy, you can't touch this, Tom, nevernevernever
I love Harry, he killed you, and I'm free, Tom, I'm free
I still hear you sometimes, on my dreams, and in the mirror and on the darkness, oh, Tom, always on the darkness
I haven't cried in years, Tom, years, so long ago and so few tears and that means I'm strong, Tom, strong strong strong.
Whywhywhywhywhywhy?
They don't help.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Once, when Lily was twelve, Ginny told her to get her toys while she finished cooking.
When Lily came back, not ten minutes later, Ginny stared at her in confusion for a full minute.
It had been a long day, she hadn't slept well (the scars on Neville's back, this time) and she had a terrible headache. In her confusion, she forgot, just for a few seconds, what she had told Lily to do.
Ginny never wants to forget another second of her life.
So she starts taking notes – of everyday, of every hour, in time, as the years go, of every minute of her day. She does it to make sure every moment is accounted for, that every second was hers, and no one else's.
(because if she forgets – if she loses her memory, then it's her scars, then her pain, then her happiness, until she has nothing left at all)
(and she'll let herself go, so completely it might just ruin everything)
She fills dozens of notebooks, faster and faster, but her job requires writing and she hides them well, so nobody notices.
The notebooks fill and she reads what she wrote on her day at dawn, when everyone else is asleep.
'Won't forget, won't forget' she tells herself, every night. She stops the pills, afraid they might cause it – she's getting better.
And if it starts getting harder to part from her paper and pen and sleeping gets rarer and rarer, that's okay, it's the price she'll pay so she can smile at her kids, help her nephews and nieces and not lose herself into the darkness.
It's how she's finally starting to heal, she tells herself. For good this time, she promises.
O.0.o.o.0.O
James' daughters are beautiful.
Harry is disappointed on how he got that girl pregnant, but Ginny doesn't see how it could be any different – both her son and Layla are stubborn and immature and shaped their lives into what they became.
And her granddaughters are so perfect – triplets, an extra headache, every one of them unique and amazing.
She likes it when they all hug her at once, crowning her – it almost hurts, but that's okay, because it makes her warm and bubbly.
Grandchildren, she discovers, make life a little bit brighter.
Albus marries and she waits patiently until the day he, too, has children (and, boy, if she understands her mother better now). It takes a couple of years, but her first grandson is warm and quiet, so very much like her son.
Ginny laughs the loudest she has in years the day he is born and, that night, reads her notes on his birth again and again, until the sun starts showing.
On the next day, in her hurry to leave so she can visit him again, she leaves the compartment where she keeps her notebooks open.
She shouldn't have.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Harry finds them – there are over a hundred by then and she imagines him, looking down at the hole in the floor where she puts them, unable to even move or go further into her mess.
Imagines what he thought when he read them, her day carefully written down, with the hours too.
23h30: Harry pulls me closer after sex, drops an arm over my stomach.
23h50: Harry finally sleeps enough for me to move and write…
When she gets home, he has the notebooks scattered around him and she's too horrified to defend herself.
"You have a problem, Gin" he says, superior and condescending and she's yelling before he can finish the sentence.
"What the hell do you know? We all have to heal some way, and this is mine, you can't take this from me. I need it, okay? I'm getting better, I am – but I can't forget, Harry, I can't, even if I want to..."
There are tears in her eyes, though she has no idea why exactly she's crying.
Harry starts talking, hugging her, telling her he's going to talk to Louis, that he's going to get her help.
She can see her reflection over his shoulder, and, funny thing, she can see all her ghosts in that mirror and the biggest one of all is an image of herself, darker and calmer, hands ready for killing and lips ready for laughing.
As Harry takes her life and crumbles it to pieces, her reflection laughs and breaks her own neck.
O.0.o.o.0.O
She hates St. Muggle.
It's white and clean, unnaturally so, and she can see her reflection in every wall.
Her family visits, bring flowers and presents. Her mother makes her favorite cookies and her children bring her pillow and clothes, so she'll feel more confortable. She's absolutely thankful – when they are there, the white dims and the world gains color again.
But they never allow her pen and paper and insist on saying that she should have told them, that they're going to help her, that everything's going to be okay.
They lie and then they leave, and she's left alone with herself.
The doctors try making her talk, give her medication she can't pronounce and try using Legilimency on her. She caves in one day and tells one pretty nurse, that reminds her of Dominique, about Carrow and how he used the cruciatos curse everything she cried when he touched her.
They double her medication and use strange spells that make the world fuzzier.
She starts losing track of time, starts forgetting the date, has to guide herself with her visitations. It makes her restless and one day she finally breaks, cries out in panic, because, God, she can't remember, where is she? when is she? whowhowho? She cries and screams until the nurses come and bind her to bed, inject her with a dark liquid that makes the world fade to black.
When she wakes up, the children are around her, crying and saying things she doesn't care to hear.
She has no comfort to offer them and even reaching her hand to take theirs seems pointless.
Her family had made her feel better in the past, but she's tired now like she hasn't been in years and she just wants to leave.
"She needs fresh air – staying hear, trapped in this room is not going to help. She's worse than she's ever been." Molly's voice rings, clear and loud, and Ginny turns to her, wide, thankful eyes.
Her mother looks at her, her eyes sad and regretful.
"I'm sorry" her mother says – for not saying it before, for not seeing it before, for being blind, for not making her stronger, for the things that were never her fault at all.
"I love you" Ginny answers and never has it been truer, although it was never a lie.
Molly smiles her best mother's smile and maybe, actually a little more than maybe, an old, forgotten scar heals somewhere inside of both of them.
O.0.o.o.0.O
Ginny likes to visit the Longbottons.
Now they allow her out of the room, she can wander around the corridors, though the nurses always keep an eye at her. She's feeling better, too, now she can move, even if her hand itches to write her day and she stays awake at night trying to remember every second.
Alice and Frank are kind and remind her of Neville, of course, which always make her smile.
Alice is lovely, always smiling, beautiful even if her hair keeps falling and her face gets paler everyday. Frank is more reserved, but he holds her hand sometimes and his eyes say "good to see you" so honestly she always smiles back.
Mostly, they're silent, but, sometimes, Alice sits by her side and tells her, in a weak, horse voice that her son is beautiful and that he's going to do wonderful things.
"I'm sure he'll be very, very happy, Lily" she says, her eyes fixed on the horizon, the shadow of madness never far.
She's always Lily to Alice and that's okay, because Alice is always part Neville, part Luna, part the person Ginny could so easily become.
Everyday, when she speaks and when she doesn't, when Ginny asks and when she doesn't, Alice looks at Frank, smiles brilliantly at him and says, when not with her mouth, with her eyessmilesoul: I love him.
Alice carries all the love in the world in her worn sleeves and gives it entirely to Frank and the memory of her son. Ginny just stands close enough that some of it reaches her.
The nurses have to come to take her to her room and she smiles at Alice.
"I'm sure Neville will be very happy and you'll tell him how proud you are of him everyday" she says.
Alice laughs, a clear, high sound that makes Frank take her hand and smile at her, proud and happy, their madness surrounding them and protecting them from all the memory of pain and loss.
(when Neville comes to visit, Ginny tells him about Alice's words and Frank's smiles and he cries into her lap for hours, but thanks her and smiles, happy and free)
(Alice will never know her son's pain, because no pain or sadness can reach her where she is – her madness is as much a sanctuary as a prison)
O.0.o.o.0.O
It's a strange place, this world of white.
It consumes everything and everyone – it's why Alice doesn't talk, she realizes. The walls can hear everything you don't say and they answer back before you dare speak at all.
Her family's bright colors don't register anymore. As everything that comes from outside it can never truly reach them on the inside – they only brush her existence and, funny thing, in no time she doesn't miss their presence at all.
Her mother bought her a bigger prison, a prettier one and now Ginny knows every wall and every way – she knows where the locks are and wonder what it would be like to crush them.
In this world, there's only ever her – she sees herself in every wall, except sometimes she's Tom, or Fred, or her mother or nobody at all.
Ginny thinks she heals, because she has no choice – nothing to do but heal in this lovely, clean prison, only ghosts to hunt to and madness to play with.
Their spells and words don't reach her and the world is never fuzzy because it's always white.
One day, she wakes up and wonders how it'd look in red.
O.0.o.o.0.O
"You know, Tom, this is getting really tiring."
Tom smirks.
"And, to be honest, I won't take it anymore."
His eyes grow confused.
"As a matter of fact, enough is enough. I've fighting you for so long, it's been destroying me, Tom."
Tom comes as close as he can, his hands on the other side of the mirror, leaning to hear her better.
"So, you're going to get very, very quiet, Tom. As a matter of fact, you'll so quiet, the only time I'll be able to hear you, it's when I die, because you will be going with me. Understood?"
Her eyes are harsh, red if they weren't brown, every inch of her Weasley temper, Tom's darkness and her own hate and anger.
Tom doesn't look scared, but he is.
"I'm not weak, Tom, I'm not. I've been weak for a long time, but I'm tired of it, because it's not who I am. So I'm going to get out of here and I'm going to get myself together."
Tom is definitely scared now, but he's proud and surprised too – he had always know she had potential, but he had been trying to kill it since the day they met, can't quite believe he hasn't destroyed her yet, when so many other fell with his words and looks alone.
Ginny holds the sun inside of her, always has, and the pain, loss and scars have diminished it, but can't extinguish it. Tom destroys, but she burns even when she lights and she will not control it anymore.
Ginny gets up from her binding hospital bed, looks around the mirror-like walls, Tom's face on all of them, her other ghosts behind him, silent and waiting.
She moves.
She has been controlling herself her entire life, careful spells, always a step behind, forgiveness above revenge, so she wouldn't burn, wouldn't annihilate everyone and everything in her way. Her world might be a world of light, but, above all, is one of control, where power is second to peace and love first to understanding.
But her family's world, the minister's laws, Harry's sacrifices, none of them exist in that world of white mirrors and only her, and she has forgotten them all.
She remembers, vaguely, that she did not want to forget, that she feared darkness on that.
But there is darkness in everything, as there is light, and she is neither and both – she no longer fears anything at all.
O.0.o.o.0.O
She does not believe she's mad.
She might be, of course – doubts she would know if she were.
But the world is clearer than it has ever been – Tom is silent and powerless to her now, her pains and regrets seem silly and mundane and she berates herself for being so afraid for so long.
She's not going to her family – she loves them and they made the world brighter in those years when there was only darkness, but she does not need them anymore. She'll light her own way for now on, and they'll continue to leave their soft, sweet lives that made her smile but were never enough.
She'll go to the world, like she had meant to do for so long, she'll will see it, taste the wind, the only one that has ever been able to match her.
And nothing will stop her.
O.0.o.o.0.O
The nurse tries to.
The woman is small, but not particularly thin. She looks determined and angry – the poor creature honestly thinks she can stop her.
Ginevra is tired of being stopped and that old line is long past now.
She drags the woman by her hair, silences her with a touch of her mind.
(and why exactly had she needed a wand at all?)
(oh, yes, to channel it, to control her magic, to not let it run free and powerful)
(no longer)
The woman continues to fight and when she reaches the corridor she knows will lead her to freedom, she snaps the nurse's neck without hesitation.
(because Tom had sent her to kill those roosters, but never told her how to do it – that was entirely hers, a silent, dark part of her that hadn't dared to breathe in a long time)
The world is the same as it has always been, but her path is clear now – it has always been. She disappears under the surprised looks of both muggles and wizards and never have they looked more alike.
She goes on to be happy and free, and leaves behind a world to whisper her name.
O.0.o.o.0.O
In the end, she wishes for nothing.
No, at the edge of the horizon, as the sun sets and life breathes its way out of her, she thinks of no regrets or changes or the ways things might have been.
There's only night and silence in the end, as it is for everybody and Ginevra Weasley is no exception. It's calm in a way she hadn't expected, but welcomes – it's a sort of calm and peace she has never known.
(she might have, in another life, but, in her death, she forgets any life that was or might have been)
Instead, she thinks of that feeling she carried for so long, the feeling she blamed on so many people, on so many things. That something-missing that haunted her and that she looked for so restlessly in life and love and death, in racing the wind in a childhood garden and in making herself bleed in the dark.
In the end, Tom is silent after all and the feeling is still there, just behind her heart. She closes her eyes, screams, cries, and still she hears it, likes drops of rain in the ocean, quiet and persistent, and, suddenly, she wonders what it would be to fly into the sun, up up up, like Icarus did once in a story she can't remember where she heard. She wonders how it would be like to burn into the heat, to feel it sinking into her bones, drying the ocean until there's nothing left but her and a dream and the light.
In a last thought, she wonders if, then, she would feel as if nothing was missing at all.
(probably not)
AN: So, uhm, I started writing this years ago and just found it on my computer. In the spirit of 2013, I decided to finish it. It's an attempt to understand and explain Ginny Weasley (who I love to death and relate for reasons I can't explain), especially because I disliked so much the ending she got.
So I tried to write her life as I saw it and the way it might have been – how she might have healed, considering the life she ended up living. And then I wrote this. So… yeah. Still not sure how i feel about it. But this story means a lot to me, so it would be the world if you guys could give me your opinion. I wrote myself into it more than I would have liked, but I do enjoy it. Also, forgive mistakes, English is not my first language ^^
Also, credits:
The title comes from this: queenofpresh . tumblr . com - and then paste this at the end: /post/26633232753/tylerknott-typewriter-series-67-by-tyler-knott
And also a big inspiration was this text: queenofpresh . tumblr . com - and then paste this at the end: /post/28688664067 (though I only found it after I was almost finished with the story).