Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own imagination. The characters depicted here all belong to J.K. Rowling except for those that I have fabricated for the story's purpose. The song lyric belongs to Kelly Clarkson and company.
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My heart can't possibly break when it wasn't even whole to start with
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"I'm sorry, Michael. It just wasn't meant to be," she says. Biting her lip, she pats his arm rather lamely, looks down, then back up at him, and then grabs her books and walks out of the library, her gait a little swifter than usual, head held high and cheeks lightly flushing.
He sits there, staring, watching her leave. Slowly, his head droops lower and lower until he's nose-to-nose with his Charms textbook that he had been studying with her. His eyes alight on the words, but he cannot make them out; the letters blur together in a jumble until he cannot even see that they are letters anymore, much less words themselves.
Shutting the book with a sudden, sharp movement, he slumps back in his chair, crosses his arms, and sulks.
"How did that just happen?" he asks himself, internally. Speaking aloud in the library was verboten enough, but without anyone else around Madam Pince would have no other choice but to chuck him out (she was actually quite lenient when students were talking to one another, recognizing that her library was a safe haven of literary and gossipped knowledge), or, better yet, send him to Madam Pomfrey to get his head examined (of course, that would just be her excuse, just what she would say to him, although her creased forehead and worried expression in her eyes would reveal otherwise).
Ever the logical Ravenclaw, Michael makes a list in his mind, compiling from his extensive memory his behavior over the past few weeks in order to find the triggering behavior that stimulated this reaction out of Ginny.
Was it his continued teasing regarding the Gryffindor Quidditch team's "dirty tactics" beating Ravenclaw? He was just teasing, pretending to be all offended and affronted whenever the subject was mentioned. Maybe Ginny hadn't gotten that.
Was it his begging off time with her, claiming that he wanted to study? She should've known that he'd be as concerned as any Ravenclaw with his classs, so much so that he would even attempt to refuse his admittedly rather boisterous hormones.
Was it his reluctance to be open with her, to confess to her what he was thinking when she asked for it, to explain to her why he sometimes just needed to be alone, away from her and everyone else?
Was it Jennifer?
Jennifer was a playmate of his he'd found in the Muggle village the Corners lived near, Georgesby, when he was four. She and he would play in the sandbox, building magnificent castles with fancy turrets and windows where all sorts of amazing adventures would take place. He was the valiant knight, coming to rescue her, the trapped princess, from the evil sand monsters that guarded the castle, preventing her escape. Those were good times.
One day, at the playground, they decided to be courageous and try the monkey bars. Usually the older kids frequented them, but Michael, upon seeing that none of the older kids were around, figured that they should give it a try. Jennifer was uneasy at first, but after seeing the nimble Michael fly through them, she knew she had to try. Two bars in, her hand slipped and she went crashing to the ground. It wasn't a long drop, but to a frightened four-year-old, it was like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
Jennifer wailed and writhed in agony. The bone in her leg was sticking out at an odd angle, the playground mulch slowly being drenched in her red, red blood. Michael ran to her, panicky, not knowing what to do, watching her blood come out faster and faster and thinking that it would never ever stop no matter what he did and when he realized that he had to go get a grown-up Jennifer's screams suddenly stopped cold but he couldn't think about her wouldn't think about her just ran and ran and ripped open the door to the laundromat and screamed for help and the grown-ups came running and he led them to her running as fast as he could.
The ambulance arrived in time to save her, pumping several life-giving pints of blood into her body. They were bemused as to how she could have lost so much blood from such a relatively simple injury, but a few hours later they mysteriously forgot all about the odd circumstances, believing that Jennifer had simply fallen off of her bicycle.
As the grown-ups tended to her, and, later, the paramedics, Michael sat crying silently in the sandbox, looking sadly at the remnants of the last castle that they had built together.
Michael knows now why Ginny left him:
Self-preservation.
