-Chapter 12: Her Past-
The city of Bristol was literally painted red. There were one hundred seventy-five dead, one-hundred and fifty-two wounded. More than half of the wounded were infected. Another fifty-three were reported as missing over the next week. Ginny left before the disposal unit started working.
She put on a happy face for Rose but inside…inside her heart was being ripped apart by past memories.
"I quit, Harry. Consider this my official resignation." Ginny handed Harry a piece of parchment exactly seven days from the night they spent in Bristol. He only nodded.
Rose was sleeping in Molly and Arthur's room now.
Harry and Ron barely slept because of all the paperwork and worrying about Ginny.
Ginny was in the other room on the top floor. She had a silencing charm cast on it. It shared part of a wall with Hermione's room. The vampire countered the charm on the wall they shared. The two would listen to each other pace during the night but they never said anything. The small door that connected the two rooms remained locked until the twenty-fourth of April.
Ginny was crying again. Hermione didn't have to take a deep breath to know it. She could hear the sobs. She had heard Harry and Ron try to convince Ginny to go to St. Mungo's almost every day. The redhead refused. It was three-thirty in the morning. Hermione unlocked the door and stepped into Ginny's room. Ginny was curled up with her back to Hermione. She held a pillow against her front and sobbed into it. There was a creak in the floorboards as Hermione took a step forward. Ginny quickly sat up and brandished her wand. Hermione waved her hand and the lights in Ginny's room came up. Hermione's eyes hurt at the light but she wanted Ginny to see her.
"Ginny…I…I know I'm not…Please talk to me."
Ginny tossed her wand back on the bedside cabinet and laid back down on the bed.
"I don't need to talk. I need to be left alone."
"I think you're lying to me."
"I think you need to mind your own fucking business."
"Ginny I just want to help you."
"You're the one that left me with an unborn child."
"You know I couldn't come back and that's not what this is about!"
"I would've protected you."
"I couldn't have asked you to do that, Ginny. That's too much sacrifice on your part."
Ginny sat upright again and glared at Hermione. "What? I'm your fucking wife! Nothing is too much of a sacrifice! Anything we would've gone through together would have been infinitely better than what I had to go through alone, Hermione."
"Tell me what that was then, Ginny! Tell me what happened! Tell me why you are acting like this…why, on the rare occasions that you have slept in the last month, have you cried yourself to sleep? Why, Ginny? Just please talk to me!"
"Please just...just go. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to go to the hospital. I just want to be left alone."
Hermione closed her eyes. How, after almost eight years, could the redhead still be so infuriating? How could she still think that it was perfectly fine to bottle everything up? There was a crash. Hermione opened her eyes to see that a glass vase that had been sitting on the chest of drawers had spontaneously combusted. She forgot she could do that. Ginny looked at her. To the vase. Back to her.
"Why are you still here, Hermione?"
"Because you need someone to talk to."
Ginny stood up and in an instant she was nose to nose with Hermione. Neither had noticed that Harry and Ron were now standing in the room, having heard the crash.
"Do you want to know what I did after I thought you died, Hermione? Do you want to hear how it was my job for four years to come after the attacks and drive a stake through the heart of the ones that survived enough to turn? Do you want to hear how I imagined every single one of them as being the one that I knew took you? Do you want to hear about how I ignored the pleas of the ones that swore to me that they would resist it? How even though they promised me with their last breath that they would be good and resist it all, I fucking drove that goddamn stake right into their chest and listened to them scream for a good five minutes before their pain ended? Is that what you want to hear from me? How about this…"
……………
The redhead walked the streets of Surrey with her trainer. She held the clipboard with the map of their area and the locations of the turning. She recognized Ron's handwriting. Screams echoed through the streets. Her trainer assured her that she would get used to them, she'd have to. It was the second time she'd been out after an attack. The first that she'd been with a member of the disposal unit. They found their first victim. She would never forget him. It was a man, middle aged. His thinning brown hair had streaks of gray through it. His eyes hadn't turned yet. They were hazel. His skin was pale and covered in blood. He held on to the two puncture wounds in his neck and writhed on the ground in pain.
"You want to give it a go?" her trainer asked.
"I-I've never seen it…"
"Best way to do it then. Most everyone turns down the job if they watch it first. You just need to go for it."
He handed her the heavy, wooden stake. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath.
"Just put the point right there, a little to the left. There, that's it."
"No!" the man on the ground yelled. "No! Please! I have…a family! Please! My wife and sons, please!"
"Never listen to them, Weasley. The minute the turning is complete they'll just go off and start looking for victims. It could be their family, they don't care. Now push hard and stand back."
She'd never heard a scream like it. It was more than pain. It was the scream of someone who knew they were going to die. Knew what they were leaving behind. Knew their family would soon get a letter.
Ginny ran to the nearest alley. She knew she shouldn't have eaten that hamburger in the Muggle diner.
"Don't worry about it Weasley. Most people don't even stay conscious the first time so you're doing pretty good," her trainer said when she returned. "What'd you think?"
"I don't know."
"Sometimes it helps to think of someone else. For me it's the one that took my eldest son."
……………
Hermione couldn't speak. There were absolutely no words. There were no words from a book or anything she had ever read that could even come close to responding to what Ginny had just told her. Harry and Ron stood, mouths gaped open.
"Anymore questions, Hermione? Anything else you want to know? You want to hear how I stood by and watched with a crossbow loaded with stakes as the sun came up in the Sahara and I listened to the screams of fifty-seven vampires as they literally disintegrated right before my eyes? Or how about that after that…I couldn't get the screams out of my head and I spent more than half a year in St. Mungo's in a bed next to the Longbottoms? How I went mad because of the nightmares and even madder because I wouldn't sleep for weeks at a time? That's why I am working for Harry, you know? Because no one else would take the psycho-fucking-pathic former vampire killer! He was the only one in the entire Ministry that would take me. The only-fucking-one! I was treated like a fucking animal…"
……………
"I've been her for two weeks, would you just let me go already?" Ginny paced the floor by her bed and mumbled to the Healer standing nearby.
"You know we can't do that Miss Weasley."
"Do we really need to have this discussion again? I have a wedding ring. I'm not a 'miss'. God you people are incompetent. Is there at least some other hospital I can go to that'll get my name right?"
"I'm sorry Mrs. Weasley. You know we can't release you though."
"Can you at least not tie me to the fucking bed every night?"
"If you'd take the potions we may not have to."
"I'll just stop sleeping then. Can you send a letter to my parents since you think I'm not sane enough to use a quill? Tell them I want to see my daughter."
"I'm not sure that's such a good idea…"
"I want to see my daughter!"
"And I want you to take your potions at night as directed."
……………
"Are you going to sleep tonight Ginny?" the Healer asked. "You haven't slept in six days. You know what happens when you don't sleep."
The redhead sat cross-legged on her bed and stared at the wall.
"I want to see my daughter."
"You saw her yesterday."
"Stop lying to me."
"I'm not lying to you, Ginny. She was here with your parents and your brother, Ron. You really need to sleep tonight, dear."
"I slept last night."
The healer sighed. It had been the same pattern for nearly two months now. She wouldn't sleep for days at a time, so far her record was twelve days, and when she did it would almost always turn violent from the nightmares because she still refused the Dreamless Sleep Potion.
"If you take the potions tonight and sleep I will tell your parents to bring Rose in tomorrow. If you can do that every night for a while then you can go home. You know the deal."
"I want to go back to work."
"We talked about this last week, Ginny. You were dismissed from your position. Mr. Potter has agreed to take you on in his department but only after you're well. Please sleep tonight, for your daughter."
"I don't want to sleep. Hermione comes to see me when I don't sleep."
"Those are just hallucinations, Ginny. She's gone and she isn't really there."
"Yes she is. Go away."
……………
Hermione swallowed. She was a little bit glad she couldn't cry anymore. She looked at Ron and Harry. The ginger man hung his head. Ginny kept yelling.
"Our daughter…my baby girl…I barely know her because the first five years of her life I wasn't there. My parents and Harry and Luna and even Ron fucking raised her. After I got out of the hospital…another three months of not working…she couldn't figure out why the hell I was around! She thought it was Mummy's job to not fucking be there! I was so obsessed with killing...so obsessed with revenge that I just…I don't even know. I don't know what I was thinking. Is this what you want me to tell you about? You want me to fucking talk to you…"
Ginny dropped to her knees and sobbed into the floor.
"How about…how about I tell you that the reason I took the assignment to the desert was because two days before…there was an attack. And one of the infected…was a fucking child! A child, Hermione! And he was in my area! I couldn't ask anyone to do it for me. I checked his records the next day, he would have started Hogwarts that year. No doubt he would have been a Gryffindor, too. When I stood over him…he…he told me he understood. Before the pain of turning really hit him…he told me…he told me that he didn't want to live with the vampires because he knew what they did to good people and he didn't want to be like that. He was the only one I ever cast a silencing charm on. The desert…I…I thought it would be easier…to not have to look in their eyes…only from a distance…"
Ginny scrambled across the floor to the trash bin. As she was heaving, Hermione looked at Harry and Ron. Both grown men stood in the doorway wiping the plethora of tears away from their faces. Ron looked even paler than he already was.
"My God…" Harry whispered.
"Are you all fucking happy now?" Ginny cried from the corner of the room where she held onto the bin.
"Ginny, I…I don't…" Ron was on the verge of sobbing.
"Your job, Gin…you were just…doing your job…"
"I was a goddamn cold-blooded killer, Harry! One hundred and ninety-seven! That's how many died at my hand!" she yelled. "I was no better than a Death Eater!"
"Ginny it was either that or have them turn and kill more…"
"No, Ron! Look at Hermione…fucking look at her! If she could…I know some of them could have…that boy…that little boy…" she vomited again. She felt the rough, calloused hands of her brother hold on to her shoulders and then wrap around her. Hermione's cold fingers slipped through her hair. Harry left and came back with a damp, cool cloth which Hermione wiped her face with.
"I'm sorry…I'm so sorry…Ron…please…I'm so…sorry…" Ginny sobbed.
"I'm sorry, too Ginny…" Ron held on tight around Ginny's shoulders.
"I…forgive you…please Ron…just…make the pain go away…"
"I love you, Gin. You're going to be okay. You're going to be okay…" Ron choked. He cried with his sister.
Hermione looked at Harry. The man shook his head.
"Don't ask," Harry mouthed. "Not right now."
Hermione nodded.
They all took shifts during the rest of the night in the drawing room sitting with Ginny. They didn't talk about it. They just sat. The redhead slept some. The next day they all had to be normal. Whether they were pretending or not, they had to be for the sake of the bouncing seven-year-old that needed her innocence preserved as long as possible.