With a Kiss
by She's a Star
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. Romeo and Juliet is quite obviously not mine - the snippets in italics are from zee play.
Author's Note: I felt oddly compelled to write a Draco/Ginny-esque piece. So...I did. Brilliant reasoning, I have.
*
She had always loved Shakespeare.
She could vaguely remember finding a battered copy of Romeo + Juliet in the attic, studying the faded cover with wide-eyed, childish awe. It seemed almost sacred, possessing an alluring, tragic beauty that had been too overpowering to understand. Two people, lost in a passionate embrace, and yet there was an air of sadness in its beauty.
Most ten year olds wouldn't have even dreamed of mastering Shakespeare - her parents had been incredulous when they found her deeply immersed in the tiny book.
Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene...
She had lost herself somewhere along the line; everything had fallen to pieces, and the only solace she could seek was in a sea of intensely piercing grey. He was so cold, so foreign and strange and unfeeling, and somehow she loved that about him because she had always felt so clearly. Emotion seemed below him, and the fact that he even looked twice at her gave her hope that maybe she wasn't just a little girl with big dreams that were destined, doomed to always be only dreams.
He was ice and she was fire; he was beautiful in his broken flawlessness, she was stained and imperfect and so wrong for him. And yet she needed him, and she didn't know quite why, except that he wasn't real to her. He was too perfect to be real, and she needed that elusiveness, that dream that wasn't hers but it had come true, and that was all that mattered.
Wherefore art thou Romeo?
She sometimes wondered, when his arms encircled her thin waist and a chilled passion stole them away into a place where there were only kisses and fingertips and whispered sweet nothings that were truly meaningless, why it had been him. Perhaps she'd grown tired of waiting for her Prince Charming. For years and years of numbed pain she waited from her tower, gazing down below at life and wondering how it would be once he reached her.
He never had, and instead she'd been seduced by a stormy grey gaze and words tainted with a silken cruelty. With him, there was everything she'd always dreamed of, but it was an elaborately played charade, something that was artificial and insincere but so deceiving that she almost believed it at times. There were rose petals and empty wine glasses stained with lipstick and kisses in the rain and stars smiling down at them like diamonds.
She sometimes missed her hero; sometimes wondered what it would be like to stare into eyes so warm and rich and pure rather than the endless rainy gaze in which she seemed to drown.
And yet she knew that the happiness she would have with him would scare her more than this cold perfection she had with her Romeo. She had always feared happiness; in her life, it had always been a blissful rhapsody in its fleeting moment of glory before it disappeared, leaving her cold and broken.
It was better this way, and she knew that as she watched him sleep and traced the Mark that branded his forearm with her eyes. They had both experienced darkness, shadows, and had chosen to live among cruel memories rather than wish for anything that could save them from this pain.
My only love, sprung from my only hate...
She rose from his side, pushing the silk sheets aside and wrapping a robe around her fragile figure. The glass door on the other side of the room seemed to beckon her, and she reached it silently and stepped outside.
The night was balmy; a sultry breeze caressed her face, playing mischievously with tangled crimson curls. She found herself thankful for the fact that it wasn't cold. Everything had been so cold for so long, and suddenly she'd grown so tired of the ice that seemed to halt her blood.
Her hands were trembling as she walked over to the bench; she knew it would be there, and it both scared and intrigued her. She hadn't meant to do it, not really. It had been a rash decision to even think of it in the first place, something so utterly unlike her. She'd been sure mere moments before that she would simply go back to bed; she'd wake up in the morning next to him, he'd kiss her with that frozen passion and she'd surrender to the quiet insistency that would surely glint in his eyes.
And yet now she found herself loathing that, loathing it with a passion, a scarlet fury, an emotion that she hadn't felt for so long.
The more is my unrest...
Shivering, she removed the blanket that she'd nonchalantly tossed there earlier, claiming that it had smelled musty and needed to be aired out.
It was there, cold metal exterior glinting in the liquid moonlight.
She shivered.
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life | She lifted it slowly, running her fingers over the cold, smooth metal. | It is the east, and Juliet is the sun | How a thing so small, completely devoid of magic, could cause her pain, she couldn't understand. And yet she didn't mind. She didn't fear pain any longer; she was no stranger to its merciless grasp. | All the world will be in love with night | She wished the shaking would stop, wished that fear would abandon her in her attempt to escape. | Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged. Give me my sin again | Trembling, she placed her fingers clumsily over the trigger. | Did my heart love 'till now? | She stared up at the sky one last time, its darkness somehow warm in a way that she would never be. | I defy you, stars | All fear seemed to leave her as she remembered him, with his gray eyes, and realized that in leaving him she would be free. | Shall I believe that unsubstantial Death is amorous, and that the lean abhorred monster keeps thee here in dark to be his paramour?
And Virginia raised the gun slowly to her temple, its metal cold against her skin. She would feel cold no more.
Thus, with a kiss I die.