-1Do you know what its like?
You're biting down on your pillow to stop the sobs welling up, lying in bed when the covers feel wrong, the headboard creaking too much, sheets too stiff, curtains too heavy - and all you can concentrate on is that single line - starting from the top of your forehead, snaking its way between your eyes, across your cheek, passing over your dry, parched lips, down onto your neck, straight between your collar bones, and that's where it ends, where your heart beats beneath your wafer-thin skin.
Or so it seems, sometimes. Skin so soft and clear that a fingertip can leave a line as deep as the streak that you feel shiver as you breathe. One fingertip, a soft, long, pale fingertip. Perhaps it wasn't even real. Yet there it is.
Do you know what love's like?
Ginny Weasley does, she feels it tear and tug at her very soul. Yet… she cannot place exactly what love is. One the one hand, there is the pleasant warmness that she feels when she wakes up, the warmness that knows she will float down the stairs into the common room, and Harry will be there for her, grinning awkwardly as he always does. It's a safe love, a safe feeling, a warm feeling. She can say it - there - she loves Harry. That's alright, she's allowed.
On the other hand, she can feel that line burning a scar into her chest, her neck, her cheek - that icy coolness of dread she feels when she lies in bed, only to hear a soft whisper somewhere near her ear. He comes for her sometimes, a whisp of dark cold. It's dangerous. Tom, she thinks, why? And he tells her, it just is. He loves her. But she isn't sure. Those cold fingers that touch her neck can tighten, can choke… he's not safe. He's cold, cold as if death itself had wormed his way into her skull. But he loves her, he says. She is his. No, she is Harry's, she tells him, trying not to feel his fingers as they tighten on her wrist.
Take that back, he says, twisting her poor arm. I won't. She wriggles. Stay still, he says, snaking his words around her mind. He is dangerous. But she loves him.
You love me Ginny, don't you? He strokes her cheek with a single finger. No, I don't. She is lying. Tears start to well up. Let me be, Tom.
Never.
His fingers wind themselves around her hair, her neck, her chest, her cheeks, her wrists… he has too many hands. She stops struggling, willing sleep. No, Ginny, not yet, he tells her, softly, softly… Tears flow fast and free now, as she lies a statue in her bed. Control, that's what he has.
Complete. Utter. Control.