Who We Settle For, & Who We Are Meant For
Prologue
Summary-Ginny's life is changed by a secret she learns on her sixteenth birthday. She begins to accept herself for who she is, but as she does so, a pending quest, of sorts, is there to ruin it for her. Soon, she realizes the importance of this quest, and sets out to achieve it before her time runs out. Draco watches Ginny, but is torn in two ways. In the process of all this chaos, Ginny and Draco are beginning to understand a few things about life. But is one of them love?
Sheer cheese, but who said that wasn't allowed. I'm not very good at summaries, so the actual story is probabaly better than what I've written here. Lots of-uhm- scenes and stuff like that. Suicide attempts, bloodlust, cutting...Whatever I can think of, basically.
Alone I stand
Amidst the trees
Alone and miserable
With no one to save me...
Ginevra Alexial Weasley swept through Hogsmeade Park, tears flowing down her cheeks like precious crystals. Red, orange, brown and yellow leaves crunched beneath her runners and a cool autumn wind blew her blood-red hair around her face, the mild sun making each tear that escaped her icy blue eyes glitter and shine. 'How could they have hidden this from me?' she thought, collasping hopelessly beneath a bare tree, snuggling into the messy, colorful, yet in her case, camoflaging mess of crisp autumn leaves. She slipped her hand along her fair neck, tracing her fingers along a red mark and not even flinching when it stung. Today was her birthday, October 12th, and she had been looking forward to a happy day at Hogsmeade with her parents, who she had met earliar that day at the Three Brommsticks. Unfortunately, her plans had been crushed like delicate roses when she had learned her family's secret. The secret of why she had always been different, why she had never fit in with the rest of the family. Sure, on the outside Ginny had looked like the perfect person. Perfect face, perfect body, perfect grades, perfect achievements, perfect family, perfect life. Wrong. A person isn't perfect if they hate every inch of themselves. Ginny had never shown her hatred against everything she was. If she had ever let anything slip, her brothers or parents or who ever she had been talking to just presumed she had had a bad day. But no. Every day was a bad day for Ginny. Inside she was a lonely, hate-filled person with a cynical outlook on the world. What she had learned today just highlighted these facts. Yes, she tried very hard to deny it, but some part of her knew it was true. True as her hair was red, her eyes blue, and the faded freckles on her nose. Ginny didn't know how long she sat there, under that tree, her back against it and her feet crossed before her. She did know that at some point her crying ceased, and she was left alone with her miserable thoughts. Alone to admire through eyes she did not think worthy to admire the beautiful settings. And at some point she had taken her hand way from the red mark that stained her porcelain skin, and had, so gently, rolled up her sleeve to reveal another mark on her perfect skin. This one, though, was not the result of a wound. It was a picture of a cross with a heart set in the middle and a snake and chains wound around it. Blood dripped from the snake's fangs as it's head emerged from behind a piece of the cross, two tiny puncture marks, so like the ones on Ginny's skin, visible on a side of the heart, where blood, again, openly flowed. All of this was frozen in picturesque detail on Ginny's upper arm. Ginny had sat and stared at it for a while, remembering the day before her birthday when the first signs of it had appeared. At first, Ginny had ignored the stinging sensations in her arm. Then the pain had gotten worst when it came around midnight that night, and finally, fifteen minutes before she turned sixteen at midnight, Ginny had raised the sleeve of her gown and discovered the brand that had etched itself into her skin. Of course she had been startled. Her first thought was remembering what her parents had said about tattoo-ing. Then she had remembered that she had not exactly wanted this to happen. She could explain, yes, she could explain in full detail about the stinging and everything. It wasn't her fault. It had turned out that she wasn't the one who did the explaining that day.
She remembered walking into the Three Broomsticks and seeing, to her surprise, her two parents, with grave looks of dread on their faces, and Dumbledore, his face forever enlightening. She had taken a seat, greeting each one of them with a fake smile plastered to her face, then waited for some one to say something. It had all spilled out from there. Like milk from a overturned, overfull carton. In the end, her mother was sobbing into her father's shoulder, and Dumbledore was no longer smiling. Ginny had felt the anger well up in her, followed by a look of betrayal. Her parents had hidden this, the truth about her, from her for all these years. She was outraged, enraged. Then She had come. That had made it even worst. Disbelief, was Ginny's main feeling. Dread, another. She had been beautiful, Veela-like. But simply not. There was something more about her, her raven-colored hair and black eyes. Then, in a daze, Ginny had followed the woman and her mother to the bathroom, where, slowly and painfully, to the more tears of her mother, the true Ginny had been brought out. It had been painful. Agonizing beyond explaination. Like having yourself ripped apart slowly, then having each limb, with feeling still intact, sliced again and again, then burned. And the only remainder of that ordeal, one which would soon fade, was the red mark on her neck and a tiny red flecks of some dried liquid around her lips. Not to say, Ginny hadn't enjoyed it, though. The pain. She thought she deserved it. It had been yet another part of Ginny's war against herself. Every ounce of pain inflicted upon her body had been sweet, sweet revenge for all those years of lying and hating silently. When it was all finished, Ginny had known she was different. Whether it was the fact that her skin was whiter, paler and more flawless, or her hair and eyes more intense, she didn't know. Then she had been shocked to oblivion once more. She had to find who and do what to them? Yes, that had stung Ginny's heart even more. How was she to know who he was? Dumbledore had confirmed he was at Hogwarts, but that didn't help much. There was also the fact that she had to commit the deed before who ever's eighteenth birthday. How was she to know when time was up? Dumbledore had given her hints that the person she was looking for was a year older than her. That didn't help the situation much either. Then her parents had tried to hug her. At the touch Ginny had gone cold, frigid. They had hidden all this from her and now expected her to forgive them? No, it was going to take a lot more than that. In a fit of fury, Ginny had stormed out the door, and so had ended up here, stuck in a circle of pure misery. She wasn't going to complain though. She had never complained about anything before, for fear that if she complained the few friends she had would leave her. That was something Ginny often experienced, but never in full blow. Loneliness.
Usually Ginny was a loner. She had only three people in this world she dared call friends and only two of them truly understood and saw the part of her she dared not show. Both were twisted, cynical thinkers like her, one a Ravenclaw boy named Noah Cavaro, who really belonged in Slytherin, and the other a genuine Slytherin girl name Stephania Tomco. If not with one of these two, or both, Ginny was usually alone or in the library, often accompanied by Hermione Granger, who was her third and final friend. Only Noah and Stepha really understood Ginny. Often times they'd all, being Prefects, meet up before, after or during their nightly rounds and head off to the Astronomy Tower where they'd sit, sometimes not saying a thing, other times talking non-stop about the happenings in their day. But now, after what Ginny had learned, her night-time rendevous with her two close friends would either be cut short or stopped all together. From the moment the racking pains Ginny had experienced in the bathroom had stopped Ginny's life had been different. And there was no way of going back, no way of trying to ignore it. She was who she was, and it was time the world saw that. Ginny got up off the ground, brushing herself off. She looked up into the darkened sky, where the first stars were beginning to come out. She ran a hand over the red mark on her neck, and the tattoo-like picture on her upper arm, before closing her eyes and accepting herself. A tear slipped out, but after that no emotion was seen on her face. She looked toward the moon, shining bright and proud in the sky. It was mocking her, Ginny felt, the whole world was mocking her with its proudness because it knew the last thing she was had been proud. Now that was different. Emotions Ginny had hidden for years came rushing back, making her face flush and her senses spin. Tomorrow was a new day. The day that would start her new life.
Author Note-There's the prologue. If the story sounds interesting to you, don't hesitate to read on. If you'd like to review this, don't hesitate either. I'm overly eager to get some critisism or praise. I don't care which you give, I'll be happy any ways. But since it is my first fic...go a little easy, pleez? Next chapter will hopefully be long, maybe done from part of Draco's POV. I'm not sure. :-)