GINNY'S STORY - MIRACLE-MERCHANT CHAPTER SEVEN

What do I want most, you ask me today. What do I want so much that my heart shrieks for it, that my soul begs and grovels for it? Well, I answer you now, why should I want for anything when the prayers of most wizards have been answered? Why should I want for anything when we have just been liberated from the greatest threat posed to us by man or nature? Do I have the right to want for anything? Of course I do. Just because a single wish has been granted, does not mean that we top wishing for anything else. It doesn't mean we stop wishing for love, for friendship, for old times.

Miracles happen, but miracles leave so many untouched. All they do is whisper in their ears that it could have happened to you. Miracles stopped happening to me a long time ago. Miracles stopped happening to me when the only man I had ever loved fell in love with someone else. Miracles stopped happening when I had to spend day after day, night after night gazing at him being held in someone else's arms - held like I always wished I could hold him. And now I know that a miracle won't happen when I need it the most - to bring him back to life.

No one who has not suffered from unrequited love can know what it is like - to watch your hearts only desire being flaunted flagrantly under your very eyes, to watch as it grows ever more distant from you. It was an agony repeated every day, every damned day. He confided in me, told me about her, about the love of his life and I listened. I became for him the younger sister he never had. The one he could talk to, the one who he could laugh with, the one he could tease. What else could I do? I couldn't lose him. To be completely cut off from him, that would be suffering greater than my heart could take. And now it has happened.

Every time I close my eyes I see his face float in front of me. I see that smile, that smile which won the hearts and the devotion of so many wizards, the smile that naturally inspired a man to lay down his life in its service. And as it is impossible to see his face without seeing their faces, I see the face of his love and the face of my brother - the holy triumvirate of our school.

I grew up believing in his infallibility, hearing his legends and then I met him and in no way did he disappoint me. He was the kind legends are built on; he was the breed heroes are made of. No one could hate him, no man despise him. Even his greatest enemy had to admire him. And I, well I was content to love him from afar, to laugh at his joys, and to sympathize with his sorrows. I admitted, if only to myself, that he was above me in every way. But I also knew that he was above her.

How to tell him now, to tell him that I cared, that I would have done anything for him? I think on some level he knew. On some subconscious plane he was aware that I would have gladly died for him. After all, he couldn't have forgotten my childish infatuation so fast, could he? But then, he never knew that the infatuation had matured into adoration.

When I was told what my brother had done, I was torn. Torn between my sympathy for my brother and my love for him. I was the only one who knew the torture my brother had undergone in the ten years that we were apart. I knew the anguished letters he had written to his best friend every night and then torn to shreds. I and only I knew the tears he had shed in fear that he had been forgotten by the two people he was willing to die for, simply because they were so wrapped up in themselves. I knew of the crazed suicide note he had penned, driven almost to lunacy by that one damning act of his life. He was my brother, the brother who had protected me and loved me. I knew he was in the wrong, but I knew he did it because he hoped he could be in the right. I knew all this and I had to decide. I had to choose between my brother and my love. My love triumphed. I went to him. I told him that I was willing to fight for the cause that he had dedicated his life to, simply so that I could fight by his side, be by his side. Now I know that I will never be with him again. But neither will she. I derive some consolation from that. Bitter, bitter of me, I suppose love is a cruel mistress.

I never hated her even though she took away the love of my life from me. I couldn't have. I saw how happy she made him and that was enough for me. But not even she could protect him from the fate that was his. The fate that condemned me to a living death. I know in my heart that she misses him as much as I do, I know that my brothers death hurt her as much as it hurt me, but I cannot forgive her for letting them die - both of them.

Yes dead, they are dead. My brother dead, killed by his own hand, my love dead, killed by the devils that plagued him his entire life. Both the men who meant anything to me, who illuminated my life, dead! And you, you ask me what I want. Well I'll tell you then, I'll tell you what I want. Oh god I want, more than anything else I want to die.