flatliner
harry/ginny.
"with you on my mind and my heart held in your hands, screaming, break me."
it's a messed up world made of messed up people, and we learn how they start out alive, and die.
god, he used to be alive.
childhood for the two of them.
written like fairytales on aged parchment with self-inking quills and candy-coated smiles.
(stories written on sheets of paper stained with coffee.)
it's been exactly thirty-two days since he last felt the quintessential spark between the redhead and himself, and she seems to slip away every day like a bar of iniquitous soap.
he cries and breaks – the boy who lived, eradicated simply by a treacherous woman – almost pathetically,
and he still sinks down to his knees on the dust gathering floors of their barely lived-in flat, and he can still be found on the floor at two in the morning, attempting to reason, but to no avail.
she hasn't a care anymore, it's begun to sink in, and yes, he cries.
(for nights at a time.)
it's been exactly thirty-three days since she last allowed her fingers to grace the interestingly shaped scar he hated so.
any sooner, and she would have hated herself for it.
she permanently starves herself of a man that simply isn't good for her – it was all – the room spins.
love has come to a flatline on a blurry monitor that neither of them can stand looking at for any longer than 1 – 2 – 3.
a guilty fight with guilty contenders and nothing more, both with hellish reality fastened onto their brains with something much stronger than loose spellotape.
"i just want you to be happy, gin." he pleads.
(he looks weak.)
"i know." she says with her back still turned to him and the door and emptiness swallows the room whole.
(she doesn't know.)
and they continue to live, even though, for minutes – hours – days – weeks they were the only thing on each other's minds.
silence consumes resolve, and he pretends his eyes aren't lifeless like the wind that battered the brick walls.
she pretends she is not hollow as the jack o' lanterns littering the streets.
and nobody can tell.
(not that anybody tried.)
he pretends that he'll wake up one day and it won't hurt quite as much, and she pretends that there's no such thing as failure.
she leaves the flat without another word.
(harry leaves his mind without traitorous absence.)
and if the cold, bitter fall wasn't enough to make him feel ill, she had left.
temporarily, of course.
(only for the night, and she'll be back in the morning after sneaking out of somebody else's bed sheets.)
morning passes by like a diseased alley cat.
finally risking lightning eyes, harry speaks with a chill in his voice.
alcohol induced.
(the cold in his tone was worthy of old man winter.)
"who?"
he doesn't need to clarify.
ginny seems to falter when she begins to speak.
though she's not in a position to lie.
"wood."
harry's dark eyebrows raise. pitifully, even.
his glasses go askew when he stands up.
"so, it's come out now, has it?"
"harry, i'm not alive."
(she could be.)
"and i'm just not enough."
pale hands cradle a pale face. his head pounds.
(drink doesn't really help.)
meeting her all those years ago, did he ever really picture this?
(not particularly.)
"i can't do this."
he laughs mirthlessly, and it scares her.
is he still the harry potter she fell in love with?
(obviously not.)
"you can't do this? you?"
there is silence and the seven o' clock world is still fast asleep, just as it is the other twenty-three hours
and fifty-nine minutes of the day.
"you haven't really stopped for a second and thought about me, have you?" his voice is cynical, though the sharp edges of every word are treading precarious waters.
it won't take much to get him this time.
she smiles with her back turned to him.
(there are emotions in the room and they're cracked like fireworks.)
then, she looks at him with ocean eyes.
and her eyes are brown.
she takes on the expression of a crying child who's just been spooked by the entity in the closet.
"d'you think it was worth it, harry?"
he sneers – so unlike him – and she wonders what ever happened to the boy who didn't know how to get onto platform 9 ¾.
she also wondered what happened to the tiny little weasley girl who wished him good luck.
"what, ginny? shagging wood? or have we changed the subject?"
and she is alone. she can feel her bones creak as she shifts a little closer to him and her mind is spinning.
"don't."
"don't what?" he raises his voice.
it's all too real, the two am tears and the seven am screaming.
and the alcohol, and the silence that lie in between.
"you used to be beautiful, ginny."
(the end of this is nowhere in sight, but harry's good at navigating with his eyes closed.)
"you still are. just not to me."
(ginny doesn't need vision either, because there's four more senses and a million emotions.)
his words are empty and he wonders when they got this way.
"you were everything to me. i don't know when you gave up the position."
hot and violent tears traced paths down her cheeks.
"probably when i fucked wood."
he takes one - two - three heavy breaths.
"no, sooner." she continues excruciatingly.
he turns his back to her, and he's a little closer to the door.
(that silky haired red head was no longer his – it had been that way for weeks and he realises it now.)
perhaps it was all up to bad luck.
though ginny didn't break mirrors often,
nor had she ever passed a black cat.
it was her fault.
(it was his, too.)
and she's very sorry that she didn't do a better job with the
dark haired boy with eyes like uncut jade, but truthfully she meant it all.
bad luck held no account and there was no point in tricking herself otherwise.
"did you ever love me, ginny?"
she doesn't reply immediately, and the answer is yes, yes to hell and back and around the world and through the universe, but she can't say it.
(guilty conscience
of the criminal at hand.)
"that's a stupid question, harry."
"answer it so i can hear you say it."
she doesn't hesitate this time to say yes.
"but what was the point anyway, right?"
he scoffs at himself, now direct with the door. his face is stony and his lips pressed into a firm line.
(he wasn't going to break down in front of her because there was no reason for her to see it.)
"i'm not sure there ever was a point, harry."
it was honest and unforgiving and brutally nostalgic.
his hand rests on the doorknob, icy metal with icy skin.
with one deep breath, laden with finality, he swings the door open.
"i loved you, ginny."
he takes one step forward, closer to the aching end of things.
"i probably still do."
with that, he steps out into the dingy hall, leaving the door wide open.
a draft carries in, and chills her to the bone greedily.
she feels cold, as if she had hit a flatline in a hospital bed.
she can almost smell antiseptic in the air,
hostilely.
nothing like dementors.
"i can't say the same."
only in a whisper she says this,
not enough to carry down the hall to him.