Disclaimer: The characters, places and situations of the Harry Potter series are the property of JK Rowling and associated companies. Some characters and plot is are the property of this author. All else is derived from many numerous sources. The lyrics of the song One Lonely Visitor are the property of Chevelle.
Author's Note at bottom of page. You can also find the German translations at the bottom in the Author's Note. Thank you for reading. It has been a pleasure.
Anatomy of an Addiction
Chapter Five
Endings
"What on God's green earth are you doing?" Draco asked with a nudge of his foot.
She rolled over and grimaced with pain.
"You know," Draco said sticking his hands into his pockets lazily and looking up at the sky. "Most girls are the indoor type. Even the outdoorsy ones don't rough it as much as this."
Ginny pushed herself up onto one elbow. "Why don't you move the fuck on and let me be, Draco?"
Draco nodded and walked away.
Ginny tried to stand and found that she could not put her weight on her left leg. She fell to the grass again, vaguely noticing that her medication lay strew around her. Shit.
"Draco!" she cried.
He took his time in coming back over. When he did finally reach her he asked, "Do you need my help?"
Ginny threw herself back on the ground in a tantrum. She screamed. No one else was outside at the moment. She clenched her teeth in pain and said finally, "Yes, Draco. I need your help."
"And you can't do everything on your own?"
Ginny threw an arm over her aching head to shield her eyes from the sun. "I can't do everything on my own," she admitted grudgingly.
"And—," Draco began.
"Draco, please don't be mean to me right now." She begged him with her eyes. "You're right and I'm wrong. I won't come bursting into your room anymore. I promise I won't."
"Now don't go promising something you'll regret later."
She half smiled as he helped her to her feet. Hobbling on one leg, one arm around Draco's neck, Ginny made it to the front desk where Hilde was sitting.
The plump woman looked up immediately with astonishment.
"What did you do to yourself, child?"
Ginny didn't say anything. Draco followed her lead.
"It looks broken," the nurse postulated, bringing a wheelchair around. Draco gently set her down and watched as the nurse cut the leg of Ginny's pants up to the knee.
"Ah fuck, Hilde! I like these pants. Damn it!"
"Hush!" Hilde snapped back. A moment later she announced in a pleased tone, "Broken."
***
There was one thing that Kate had to do before she left.
Henry was gone.
He knew a man on the East End that could forge papers. She needed papers that said she was a German.
Getting up and wrapping herself in her only coat she put some things in a bag. She could not take everything. Looking around the small room above the Mondshein Kabarett she felt desolate inside as she realized that she would soon leave this place…her one true home. And she would never come here again. Home was gone.
"Hello, doll. What's with the luggage?" Tom's voice rang suspiciously over her shoulder. "You're not trying to leave me, are you?"
Kate turned. She faced him.
"I cannot stay. Neither should you."
"Why shouldn't I stay? A war would make me rich. All of the underworld longs for it." Tom pushed away from the wall he was leaning against. "You will stay too. I need you."
"Henry is taking me to America," Kate said in a small voice.
Tom laughed at this.
"How could you survive in America? In a factory? On the street? No. Here you have work and a bed. You have me, Kate."
"I have only what I carried from my village. Tom, I have to leave you. I don't want to. But please understand…" Kate pleaded with him, tears running down her cheeks. She came toward him and wrapped her trembling arms about him.
He did not receive her embrace.
With incredible reflexes he reached around and took her by the wrist, twisting it painfully until she was on her knees.
He bent low and whispered in her ear, "One could be addicted to almost anything—money, drugs, power, alcohol, control…love?" He brushed a dark curl from ear and kissed her neck. His fingers where still clasped tightly around her wrist, forcing her into submission. "But all I can tell you, doll is that it's never the thing you truly want…never what you truly need…But you still want it…still need it."
"Henry loves me. I know he does. Did you ever?" Kate searched his eyes and knew his answer.
"Das Leben ist ein Kabarett, doll. And I love my life here. But who do you love, Katerina? Who will you betray tonight? Henry…good, noble, safe Henry. Or will you betray the one you need, the one whose soul is your soul? We understand each other, you and I. We are creatures of the underworld. We follow the night."
"He's bought my ticket…I am leaving you, Tom."
He brought a hand down hard across her face. "You don't know what you're saying. You belong to me. You don't have the luxury to choose who you go with."
"Tom," Kate said, a hand to her cheek where he had struck her.
"You won't leave me…even if it means that you die with me." Tom pulled a gun and leveled it between her eyes.
"Tom. No please. Tom," Kate said, shying away from him and the gun that he shoved in her face.
"Beautiful Kate. Say you love me," Tom asked, kneeling down in front of her, tracing her jaw line with the muzzle of the revolver.
She shook and she cried. "You know I do, Tom."
"Say it!" he raged, pressing the gun into her cheek.
"I love you." A tear fell with the sound of a shot.
Tom dropped beside her, a bullet through his throat.
Kate fell under the weight of him and screamed. She had thought it was her blood she was seeing. She couldn't tell if she was relieved to learn that it belonged to Tom instead of her.
Henry knelt next to her and rolled Tom off of her.
Kate sat up and slowly turned to Tom, shock stiffening her movements. "No! Tom, please don't be dead!" She shook him.
He looked on her one last time and fell still.
"Kate," Henry said, pulling her to her feet. "They heard the shot. They'll be here in a minute. We have to go."
He pulled her from the room. All the while she struggled to keep Tom in sight until Henry kicked the door shut behind them. But she couldn't fight the image of him that remained, bloody, motionless on the floor.
Henry placed the revolver into the waistband of his pants and covered it with his jacket.
They moved quietly to the train station.
There was a knock on her open door.
It was Draco.
Pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, Ginny smiled and invited him in.
"How's your leg?"
"It hurts. They won't give me anything for the pain."
"Why were you jumping out of your window? You have two days left here."
Ginny sighed. She held up her finger where Harry's ring still was. "He asked me to marry him."
"So you jumped out the window?"
Am I alone in here…
"I dropped my medication out the window. I was trying to get it without getting caught."
He sat next to her on the bed.
She leaned back on her pillows and set her computer aside.
"You're a hypocrite." Draco leaned toward her and kissed her lightly on the lips.
Ginny moved away and shot him an incredulous look. "Why?"
"You lecture me on using, letting Eden use and then you jump out of a window to chase after your fix. Hypocrite!"
"I guess we all need help." She pulled Draco down on top of her and smiled.
"That's why we're here, I suspect," he said.
He kicked her cast covering her freshly broken foot and she howled in pain.
"Sorry," he laughed.
"It's not funny," Ginny whined.
"I can make it better," Draco said, unbuttoning her shirt. He looked over to where her laptop sat and asked, "Is that your next story?"
"Yes," Ginny said, pulling his shirt over his head, messing up his hair.
"Can I read it?" he asked.
"Later," Ginny answered running a hand down his chest and to his belt, unfastening it while he pulled her hair out of its knot.
Knew you were here…
He mumbled something incoherent, pushing her shirt off of her shoulders, moving his lips about her warm neck.
"Shit!" Eden said, walking in and then turning, walking straight into the hallway again. She cracked the door and said, "Ginny? Hilde's looking for you."
Ginny fell back on the bed with a sigh.
Draco looked down at her and smiled.
"I'd better go," Ginny finally said, sitting up and buttoning her shirt. She put her hair back up and reached for her glasses. Draco had dropped them on the floor.
"Bitchin' tattoo, Draco," Eden offered.
Draco looked from his bare arm to Ginny and hid a smirk.
Ginny smiled and shook her head.
Taking up her crutches she hobbled to the door and then downstairs, leaving Draco with instructions not to touch her computer.
Sister confirms suspicions…
***
"Dad?" Ginny said in surprised as she came to the reception desk at the entrance.
Arthur smiled at his daughter. A smile that faded into a frown as he watched her hobble to him on crutches. He promptly made her explain the necessity of the plaster boot and the tin legs that helped her walk with her hands.
Hilde thought he was crazy and made her opinion known with a derisive snort.
"Outside, dad," Ginny said, shooting Hilde a look that the nurse ignored.
"But it doesn't hurt, does it?"
Ginny smiled. "As painless as if Madam Pomfrey had fixed it."
Arthur sighed with relief.
"What's up?" Ginny asked, collapsing into a rocking chair on the porch. The clouds were foretelling rain. She desperately wanted rain. Sun was so depressing.
"Harry let me drive your car the other day," Arthur said with the smile of an awestruck child.
Ginny laughed. "How was it?"
"Fantastic. How does an automatic gear shift work?"
Ginny laughed harder. "If you like it so much, dad you can have it."
"Oh no. I don't want you to do that," Arthur protested.
"I don't drive it. Harry has his own. Please. I'd like you to have it, dad."
Arthur smiled. The smile soon faltered.
"I read that book you sent to me," he said finally.
"Which one?"
"Idiot's Guide to…Something or other. I can't remember."
"The Idiot's Guide to the Mafia?" Ginny asked. "Let's hear it then."
Arthur leaned back in his chair and recited, "Albert Anastasia was the Gambino boss during the mid-1950's. An early reputation for being quick to kill to enforce his will as the head of the mythical Murder Incorporated earned him the name 'Lord High Executioner.' Still others used the label 'The Mad Hatter', which suggested that he was crazy like a character from Alice In Wonderland (By the way, the term Mad Hatter comes from the practice of using mercury in the making of top hats. Constant contact with this substance damaged the brains of the workers, hence the name, 'Mad Hatters')."
"Brilliant!" Ginny said, clapping.
Her father took a theatrical bow, rocking forward in his chair. "By the way," he added as an afterthought, "what's a Tommy Gun?"
Ginny snorted and leaned back.
Her expression fell and she looked to her father once more.
"What's wrong, baby girl?" he asked.
"You're not here to recite facts with me, are you?"
"No." Arthur sat up and became very grave. "Your mother's back in the hospital."
Ginny's eyes dropped to the ground. She said nothing.
"When you get out tomorrow, you should visit her. There might not be much time to dally."
"She's dying, then?" Ginny asked in a small voice.
"She's been dying for sometime, love."
Leaning forward, Ginny placed her head in her hands, her elbows on her knees.
"She misses you, pumpkin."
"No," Ginny said, sitting sharply up, "she misses the idea of me and Harry."
"The idea? You mean that there is no you and Harry?" Arthur asked pointing to the ring.
"That's not what you think."
"He'll wait around forever for you, lamb. But your mother can't. Whatever this is between you and Harry, put it aside for one day and see her."
"Wouldn't she much rather see him? She's always loved him more."
"Did you get enough love when you were younger, sweet pea?" her father asked, placing a hand on her knee.
"I grew up in your love. Yours and mum's."
"And Harry?"
"No, he didn't have anyone to love him."
"Can you blame your mum for having a heart too big to leave him out?" Arthur said.
Ginny didn't answer. She sat thinking and finally crying.
"Will you see her?" he asked finally.
Ginny nodded.
"Do you want me to come and get you tomorrow, pumpkin?" Arthur asked after a moment.
"No," Ginny said, wiping her eyes. "Harry's going to come."
"I love you, precious," he said finally, kissing her head and walking toward the cab. He got into the front passenger seat so that he could watch the driver drive and maybe play with the radio.
Ginny smiled.
Standing, she had decided that it wasn't fair to hate as much as she did.
She hated Harry for loving her too much, her mother for loving her too little…would she ever be happy if she didn't try for it?
No.
She looked down at the ring on her finger.
No. She would have to try for it.
***
Eden sat puzzled with wonderment watching Ginny.
"That is so cool," she said.
Ginny dipped a quill into ink. It really wasn't all that fabulous…but to someone who was used to Bic ballpoints…she guessed it must be cool.
And besides the note you left on my bed where I held you so close…
She set the quill to the paper and wrote two notes.
On one she wrote simply, I tried, Harry.
She folded it and placed it in an envelope.
On the envelope she wrote his name.
Eden looked on more suspiciously as Ginny slid the ring from her finger and placed it in the envelope as well. She left it on the table by the lamp.
"Did you just break up with him?" Eden asked, eyeing the letter.
"Sort of," Ginny sighed standing up and leaning on her crutches. She took the other piece of parchment and her laptop leaving the room. She left the half-used bottle of ink in the bathroom on the sink.
It took a while to maneuver the stairs, but she made it to the common room and the sofa she had come to know as familiar and safe.
Did you think I'd forget…
She set the note aside for now and returned to her writing.
The streets were seemingly more alive tonight with Gestapo now that they had something to run from. It could have been in their minds. It could have been real.
But what was real and what was not?
Kate decided that she couldn't tell anymore.
Henry had not relinquished her hand, but pulled her forward to the train.
Smoke, steam, pollution of a dying industrial opulence filled the platform where they stood.
"Come," Henry urged her. "The train's going to leave whether we're on it or not."
He stepped aboard as the pistons began to creak to life. The train lurched slowly forward.
Everyone was saying goodbye to something.
There was an end here.
Somewhere else there would be a beginning.
Somewhere else.
"Come on, love," Henry urged holding out his hand.
She blinked.
Shook her head.
There was no beginning for her anywhere.
"I can't leave, Henry. I'm sorry."
He looked down at her in disbelief. The train slowly carried him away from her. "Kate!" he called. "Katerina!"
She heard this but turned from him. The trained picked up speed taking him away from her and out of the city. She walked the opposite direction, the way she had come. She muttered to herself as she walked out of the station, "Meine Verdammnis wird meinem Leben ohne dich sein."
My damnation will be my life without you.
She was damned either way.
Ginny looked up and swallowed hard.
She brushed a tear from her cheek with quiet embarrassment. She had never cried at her own stories before.
She set her laptop down and hopped on one foot to the window. It was raining now.
She smiled.
Rain was beautiful.
She gave a start when, from seemingly nowhere an owl tapped on the glass. It was wet and agitated and she let it in immediately, looking around just to make sure no one had seen.
There was a piece of soaked printing paper in its mouth. There were a few lines of smudged ink.
Not too smudged that she couldn't make them out.
It read: Ginny, I hate to be the one to tell you since it's likely that I won't be forgiven for being the bearer of this news. But, love, your mother died this evening.
I am sorry.
Harry
Ginny blinked in amazement.
She couldn't be dead.
Ginny was going to visit her tomorrow as soon as she was released from rehab.
She blinked.
Apparently there's a point when you're too desperate for tears.
She held the note in her hand and stood there, limbo in a sense of unreality.
Hollywood unreality.
"Ginny, dear," her mother chimed cheerfully. Her image swam in and out of Ginny's fuzzy vision. "Drink this. Hot cocoa. Dumbledore said it would put you to rights in no time."
Ginny stared in disbelief.
Hot cocoa.
Did they think that chocolate was an honest to goodness cure-all?
Her mother held it out expectantly.
"He killed him, didn't he?" Ginny asked, panicked.
"Now, now," Molly cooed. "No need to upset yourself. Harry is fine."
Ginny stared between the cocoa and her mother. "But what about Tom?"
"Tom?" her mother repeated. "Yes, of course Tom is dead. If it hadn't been for Harry, you would be too, young lady."
"I wish I were," Ginny said sinking into her covers. She had never felt such a painful void of loss.
Couldn't be more of a mess…
Ginny didn't show any sign of mourning, bones in her body ached with sorrow. And it would ache with every exultation Harry would receive as a hero of them all, savior of little Ginny fuck-up.
To hate the praise of him, to hate him, she had to hate her mother too. She loved him. Like her dearest child.
She had wasted so much time on hate.
Why had Tom come into her life so abruptly, left it so fast and devastated everything along the way and everything hereafter?
How was escape possible?
She made her difficult path back up stairs and past her own room.
Afraid to be alone.
She needed him.
***
Draco heard the door to his room open.
He looked to the foot of his bed and saw her move through the space and come to stand next to him.
He yawned and said, "Ginny?"
She answered by dropping her crutches and lifting her shirt over her head, shaking her hair out and tucking herself under the covers next to him.
He kissed her face, her cheeks, her forehead, her lips.
For to breathe used to be another way I'd take you in…
She was not crying, but she held her hands over her face so that he could not see her pain in the thin moonlight.
"Ginny? What's wrong?" he whispered.
She curled up in his arms and said in a small trembling voice, "My mother's dead. And I'm tired of hating everyone."
"Oh Jesus," Draco cursed, holding her tighter to him. She would have scared him less if she had cried. For not to cry…she was just like Sally-Anne before…
She sat quietly and folded herself in his arms and in the sheets, taking comfort from the warmth of him.
"What will you do when you leave?" she asked finally.
"I have to run," Draco said, moving his lips against her forehead as he spoke.
"So you're out then?" Ginny asked.
"No. I was out a long time ago. I had a friend who couldn't handle it and killed herself. I guess I haven't been really in it since then. But I'm hunted now."
"Did you love her?" Ginny asked.
Draco thought about this. "I don't know. She was a lot like you…it would have been hard not to love her."
Well it's time to wake up…
"I can't tell love from hate anymore. Aren't they the same thing, really?"
"No, Ginny," he said, a little frightened. "No, they're not. Hate destroys what love builds."
"Love doesn't destroy things?" Ginny asked.
Draco didn't answer. He didn't know. Maybe it did.
And separate feelings…
"Do you want to come with me?" he asked her after a moment in which there was no sound but their breathing. His fell in time with hers.
"Where?" she asked.
"Anywhere where I can be with you."
She didn't answer but asked him, "Do you think you'll be scared when you leave?"
"Scared of what?"
He felt her shrug against his bare chest.
That I keep falling into…
"Going back to life the way it was."
"Life is going to be the same, no matter where you leave it or what drugs you take to get through it, Ginny."
"I know," she admitted hopelessly.
Each seems like good reasons…
"Please tell me you'll be okay," Draco asked in a heavy, sleepy voice.
Ginny looked up at him. His eyes were closed.
"I am when I'm here," Ginny said softly. She was sure he hadn't heard her.
He was asleep.
Quietly she got up and left him. Pulling her shirt back on, she leaned over and kissed his lips and turned to leave.
Her laptop and a note lay at the foot of his bed for him when he woke up.
But I feel a breakdown…
She turned the knob on the door of her own room silently, mindful that Eden was asleep.
In the bathroom she picked up the bottle of ink and fished through Eden's hiding place in the tissue box for a syringe.
Careful not to spill a drop, Ginny filled the plastic tube with the black liquid, tapping her fingernail against the side to knock out the bubbles.
Knowing little more about needles than that the pointy end goes into the skin, Ginny held her breath and pumped the ink into her veins.
Don't care if it shows up…
She wasn't prepared for how much it would sting, or how it would throb in her bloodstream and slowly weaken her until she couldn't stand anymore.
Then she couldn't sit up.
After that, she couldn't see anything.
Then…nothing.
I'm praying this for you…
***
He expected her to be there when he woke up.
But then, no. She wouldn't be.
She was leaving this morning. She probably didn't want to wake him.
He sat up and saw that she had left him her computer.
The note lying on top of it said: It's finished and it's all yours. Enjoy.
He put the note aside and opened the screen.
Returning to her room above the Kabarett she opened the door with captive breath.
She didn't want to see him lying there.
But he hadn't moved.
Nobody would have moved him.
No one had discovered him yet.
She knelt and took his hand.
Placing it over her heart she stared into his face, expecting it to show some form of life, any life.
Maybe he was an addiction.
But some of them you couldn't hope to live without.
Others were for fun.
Some were easy to kick.
Some stayed with you forever and burned the need for them into your blood.
"Wenn ich konnte, würde ich meine Seele in dich gießen, aber ich habe keinen Rest," she cried and bent low to kiss his cold lips.
If I could, I would pour my soul into you, but I have none left.
Kate lifted Tom's head and placed it in her lap, a very gentle gesture that he would have detested in life. She could only hold him now in death.
Picking up his loaded revolver, she held it trembling to her head.
"Ich gebe dir mein Blut anstatt."
Instead, I give you my blood.
Draco finished reading.
It was a moment more before the panic in him would allow him to move.
This wasn't a story that she was working on.
It was a suicide letter.
A long, convoluted, drawn out, painfully explicit rant about living a life that was meant to be ended long ago.
He prayed she hadn't acted yet.
But when he saw Eden standing motionless, back to him, staring at the bathroom floor, he knew his prayer was met by deaf ears.
She was dead.
He threw the laptop on the bed. He had somehow managed to hold onto it while he was rushing down to the third floor. He dropped it now like incriminating evidence.
Til answered I'll say…
And he would always remember it in slow motion.
The celluloid.
The black and white.
The ink.
The blue of her lips.
The sound of the faucet dripping as there were no words to drown it out.
Neither of them moved.
Not even when her body had been taken away.
Now it seems there's a choice…
***
Eden left.
She was in counseling.
Draco couldn't leave.
He waited there.
For something.
For nothing.
What was the point?
That began with a break…
He thought while he waited. He though he should have known.
What would he have done, then?
Save her?
It was clear that she didn't want saving.
So today know that never again will I know you that way…
He didn't let Eden take the wrap for the syringe.
The one thing that he owned up to in his entire life.
And it had been the thing that had killed her.
Killed them both.
Harry came in and ignored him. He went about the room collecting her things.
He left the laptop.
Draco wondered if he'd done this on purpose or was he a scatter-brained mourner.
Draco carried it out to him.
He found him collapsed on the floor outside her room.
Head in hands.
He was sorry now.
Ginny really shouldn't have hurt so many people.
But should she have gone on hurting to spare them all?
"You've left this," Draco said setting it beside Harry.
Draco bent and opened the screen.
"I think you should read this," he urged.
Harry looked at the screen. He looked at the ring clutched covetously in his hand. He shut the laptop and stood, carrying it under one arm. "I'll let David take care of the editing."
Draco understood. He wanted to scream, but he understood.
If he were the man that had loved her and lost…he wouldn't have wanted to know either.
Am I alone in here…
Author's Note: I waited until the end so that I didn't spoil anything. I feel like I should say a few words concerning the content of this chapter. I in no way condone nor do I condemn suicide. I use it as a mode of expression in my stories a lot. I have no personal experience with it and have no knowledge of it other than imaginative. The use of drugs and alcohol in this story was also only an avenue that I wanted to explore on the screen only. I do not promote the use of illegal substances nor do I encourage heavy drinking. I hope that my story was enjoyable as well as shocking. Maybe it was none of these things. But I sure thought it was worth writing anyway.
German Translations:
Das Leben ist ein Kabarett: Life is a Cabaret.
Meine Verdammnis wird meinem Leben ohne dich sein: My damnation will be my life without you.
Wenn ich konnte, würde ich meine Seele in dich gießen, aber ich habe keinen Rest: If I could, I would pour my soul into you, but I have none left.
Ich gebe dir mein Blut anstatt: Instead, I give you my blood.
If you are more familiar with German than I and would like to flame someone for brutalizing a beautiful language…please feel free to flame my sister, Soupofthedaysara.