'To Sleep No More' Part 8
by Ginny :)
OK, here goes part 8!
Since quite a few of you people reviewing this have said that this isn't at all the kinda thing you'd usually read, if it makes you feel any better, this isn't at all the kinda thing I'd usually write. No, I can honestly say, I've never written anything with as much depression and violence in it as this, lol. ^_^ Just as well, really.
I expect you all hate my author's notes, but I like reading other people's ones, and writing my own. :) Hah.
And I know now why I put Malfoy in it to begin with... but I stupidly killed him off early... grrrr...
Anyway, read & review!!!
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Ron saw Ginny fall, but didn't have time or ability to do anything for her. He ran on, glancing behind him for a second. He knew she was dead. Nothing could have a hole in it like that and still be alive. No time to think. Don't think. Thinking can be fatal. He raced on, the footsteps of the woman right behind him, the gun still firing every so often.
His inticts were directing his every move, every nearve in his body screaming at him to run for shelter; home. The dugout. He barely thought about the fate of his sister. He knew if he did, he'd lose the will to live.
Ron knew that if he thought about the immanse pain in his side, the aching of his legs, the gripping feeling in his chest, fear and pain would grip him, and he was as good as dead. His legs scissored into strides, and he seemed to lose control over himself.
He had to get home. To safety... that's what his insticts all told him, clouding all other thoughts in his head.
The dugout wasn't far now... he could see the pile of earth, wood and rubble that marked it. He put his head down, and with a final spurt of speed, he raced through the entrance, tripping up where there was a drop between the door and the ground.
He collapsed against the wall. It felt as though someone was sticking athousand knives into his chest. His legs gave way.
Then he realised what he'd done. He'd lead the enemy straight to their safehaven. She knew where they lived!
*
Jacquline's POV
I stopped running as Weasley entered the well- disguied dugout. So that's where it was. I grinned to myself. This would make my mission a whole lot easier... I'd never known exactly where they're little hiding place was, and now that I did, everything could be as easy as pie... assuming they didn't try and run away. On the other hand, if my judgement was correct, Potter wouldn't be doing any running at all for somt time yet.
On the plus side, I was one Spacer down, 3 to go. And that Weasley girl was definitely dead. I hadn't seen hide nor hair of that Malfoy boy, either, since I'd shot him some weeks ago. It would be safe to assume that he, also, had copped it. This was looking good.
I'd get Weasley back. He was now on my hit list. True, he'd delivered Miss Weasley to me, but he had tried to defy me-- to warn her. That will not do.
*
If Ron had had enough breath left, he would have sworn. As it was, the race across the endless expanse of bombed- out London was enough to take all the breath out of him. Soemthing told him that Raoul wasn't fool enough to follow him inside. She'd have realised that there was bound to be wands and things; she wasn't completely stupid, after all.
Ron slumped onto the floor, leaning against the wall, face in his hands. He was crying. He remembered seeing Ginny fall. He remembered the blood all around her. He remembered how much he loved his sister, his one surviving reletive.
True, when he'd set out with her earlier, he'd intended to let Raoul kill her and be done with it, but he'd found himself reacting on instinct, warning her, trying to save her. Not that it had worked. She was dead now.
The tears ran down his face, making marks in the dirt and dust that caked it, like rivers in a valley.
Everything had gone wrong again. So, so wrong. He might as well be true to his friends now. He was on the Muggle's hit list, almost certainly now.
Why had he ever gotten mixed up in this... he'd wanted to work against Death Eaters, not his friends and family. Oh, God, eveything was so horrible. And so real.
The papers had always been full of people dying, Muggle tellys were overrun by stories about death, destruction, mysery and woe. Many books and films were no better. People just accepted it. Ron had done. People were desensitised, so that many of them no longer cared what happened to other's families. Until it happened to them. This wasn't a book. Or a film. Or Newsround on CBBC. Or even some story he was being told by someone or other with an over- active imagination. This was real.
He'd have to tell Harry and Hermione about Ginny. That would be awful. Almost as if, to put it into words would be to make it come true. And he'd have to tell them about his giving away their hiding place.
Did he really have to tell them, just yet?
Of course he did. There was no choice. They had a right to know. Ron wished that he didn't have to be the one to tell them, but then, he hardly had a choice.
Determinedly, he wiped the tears from his face.
~*~
Hermione was asleep on the floor in one of the rooms, with a threadbare blancket wrapped around her thin shoulders, and match- stick legs sticking out the end. Her face looked pasty, and every so often, she could cough, and blood would come out of her mouth.
Ron wished that she looked again like the old Hermione, with board shoulders, a shy smile, and no bones sticking out in her joints, like they did now. Ron realised he was procrasinating. He sighed, took a deep breath, and shook her a little.
"Hermione?"
"Hmm?" She tunred over, and looked at him through half- closed eyes.
"Er... hi," Ron realised that he didn't know how to begin.
"'Lo, Ron. You two back?" she mumbled.
"In... a manner of speaking," Ron agreed, wincing at the memory. Hermione noticed the look on his face.
"You've been crying," she said.
"I know... I know. Hermione, I... Ginny-" but he couldn't finish the sentence. His face crumped up, and he was sobbing, once again, into his bony hands.
Hermione sat up, staring at him, "What about Ginny?" She asked, a note of urgency in her voice, coughing.
Ron shook his head. He couldn't... he just couldn't...
"Tell me!" she persisted, "What's wrong?!"
"Ginny..."
"What about her? Is she all right?" Hermione bit her lip.
Ron shook his head.
"Ron, please, please tell me..."
So he told her. Everything. It was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do in his life, tell someone something like that.
When he'd finished, Hermmione didn't say anything. Not a word. Ron had managed to stop crying as hard, and sat with his face in his hands again, staring into his fingers.
And then tears came from Hermione's eyes, too. She sat there. They sat there. Together. At least, she spoke.
"Have you told Harry?"
"No."
"Do you wan't me to tell him?"
"Yes... I mean no... I mean..."
"Well, someone has to," Hermione rubbed her eyes. Her skin looked papery thin on her hands, Ron noticed. None of them was what could be described as 'chubby', but Hermione was wasting away from quicker then the others. When there was food now, she didn't eat it, because it hurt her to swallow.
In the end, Ron told Harry, who reacted much like Hermione.
After everyone being so happy at Ron's arrival, they felt espeacially crushed at the loss of Ginny. Ron felt as though he was completely resposible for his sister dying, and for the whole change in mood.
Everyone tried to imagine Ginny up there, in Heaven, with the angels, with enough to eat, nothing to hide from, no horrors to be scared of, with a warm bed and no pain. But then they'd remember she was dead, and nothing about it seemed happy or blessed.
They all crept out after dark that night, under the assumption that the Muggle was at home asleep, and found Ginny's body, cold on the ground.
"'He who places his brother in the land is everywhere,'" Hermione quoted, as though it were a prayor.
Ron and Harry looked at her, questioningly.
"all over the land, everywhere, people are burying their sisters and brothers... just like this," she explained, sadly.
And it was true. There was no one left alive, who had not lost someone close to them, from the lowest raking Spacer, to the highest ranking Muggle, each had suffered at the hands of the other.
And the all wondered; would the terror ever end...?
____________________________________________________________________________________________
OK, sorry that was short, but as I keep explaining, I haven't that much time at present.
[Incidently, I've been co- writing a fic with my friend Bunny Chan, called 'Even Angels Make Mistakes!'. It's posted under the name 'bunny chan & Ginny :)'. It's a light hearted story, about an un- angelic angel called Melissa, who is VERY ANNOYED when she is sent on a top secret mission to Hogwarts by accident. Basically, I wrote it because this was depressing me. I think it's very funny, but that's just me. To check it out, go to
http://www.fanfiction.net/index.fic?action=Directory-AuthorProfile&UserID=37565
and click on the fic's title!] Please don't forget to read and review eitehr this one or that!!!!!
Ginny :)
