Dear Tom: Of Dawn and Twilight

(still in form of a poem)

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Dear Tom,

Each time the sun rises anew I feel

relief and happiness – sweet

as chocolate and thick as cream – swamp

over my tired eyes and my limp body.  Dawn

saves me from the quiet tremoring evils

hiding in the night, slights of shining fire

plucking my soul to safety.

I wake in the morning, content with stillness

as the rising sun remakes me, and after a few

moments of simply lazing I stretch

out my fingers and toes, feeling oddly,

happily, as a well-fed cat might.  I have

always loved the morning, from the dawn of my

fourth Christmas to the sun-break of today;

there is a simple, extravagant beauty in the

glowing painted shades of fire that emerge, as

though to say the world, too, is a phoenix

like kind Fawkes.  "And from the ashes

it rises in glory."

Twilight and the high exultation of stars – I'm

not a night person.  It's too easy for things of

shadows to sneak upon me, demons, snakes, monster –

and men.

I know you hate – hated – it when I whine,

but I'm not trying to.  I hate you, yes, but I don't

want to make you feel – how do I know

what I don't want?  Or in these morning hours of

confident bewilderment, what I do want?

I want you to hear what my mornings were like

before I knew you, when I still had the promise

of freedom from fear, what the seconds

of my life were when I had you to confide and place

my trust in, and

what it is like now.  If you aren't here at all or if you

have the tiniest smidge of your soul burned deep

into my core, I need to set this down, rid

it from my mind before it festers and bleeds slowly,

darkly to melt in my essence.  Listen to me,

please.

I'm the last of seven, pampered and ignored

as both the baby girl and an annoying youngest.

Weasleys aren't rich and if anything we were

poorer then, but what I never had in toys

and dresses was more than made up for.

I don't think you'd understand, really, not with

your childhood being what it was, but

when everyone loves you and you spend every

day amid that love,

it gives a light to every step you take.  (Is that why

you were so empty, Tom?  Is that loneliness,

that emptiness of love and touch, what bled

you into Lord Voldemort?)

Ron was my closest friend when we were small,

lanky and headstrong and willing to shove me in

the dirt those times I was a snort, though no

one else would.  We woke together and played

together until he was nine – do you remember

your ninth birthday?  Did you become to grown up for

the other kids? – and then I had Mum.  But it

was still quiet and gentle, the perfect homey place to

coddle a little girl as she grew to be a little witch.

My first year at Hogwarts…I was more concerned

with Harry than other matters, feeling sure

I was desperately in love with him and determining

I would find someway, even if I had to enlist

the help of a Slytherin – ironic, isn't it, Tom? – to

win his affections.

And I found you, or you found me, and

I hadn't felt as happy in years, with the glory that

was having a secret all for myself and gaining

my closest friend – I would say bosom

buddy, but I think you wouldn't like to be called

such.  Men can be so absurd at times.

I fell so easily down the slippery cliffs of your lies,

trusting you and sharing in strictest

confidence all the things to strike my child-heart.

I don't know if anyone has ever said or writ

this to you, and I should hope you won't find

offense in it, but you could be a romantic, even

as a false one.  Not once before, nor once after, did

I see a Gothic romance in someone's penmanship.

I was such a foolish girl to never recognize

the shallowness and the darkness behind the

delicate script and fanciful words.

I would sit through my days, listening only in

half-attentiveness in my classes, and night fall

replaced dawn as my favored time, as darkness –

cool, fragrant, black as an endless lake – fell and

the school day shaded away.  Curling on my

bed, flipping our diary open, I found

youthful giddiness with each word shared in exchange.

Thinking back on it, when I first began to

fear something was terribly wrong with me, I should

have wondered, if just once! if it was of your

device.  A Slytherin, perfect with words and so

very silver-tongued (oh you were so horribly charming),

a strange book that answered with thought of

its own, and a thousand tiny things that cried out

in breaking, glass voices: "deception!"  But

I was deaf to those voices, turning to the source of

my pain for help, pleading and crying and weeping.

You must have laughed.

I reckon you'd know – the Voldemort part of you

that existed elsewhen – what Da said when I let slip

the age you were in the book, what with

Scabbers-the-fink living yet with us.

"Seventeen," you wrote most politely, your

letters smiling benevolently and with no shortage

of charisma.  "I do hope you won't mind that, dear

Ginny.  I should like to think you and I might

dare be friends, no matter a trivial age.  You do

sound like such a mature first year, rather

more of a woman than a girl."

God, I wanted to believe that so much,

wanted to feel I was older, wiser, and worthy

of Harry's love.  Why, in retrospect, is

everything painted in grey shades of irony?

"Seventeen?" sputtered Da with a great deal of

horror.  He repeated it again, disgust and

offended paternal amazement touching it all, continuing,

"He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named or not, you aren't

to be speaking with boys that much older than you

if they aren't a Weasley!"

I wanted to write that to you, giggling at

Da's overprotective thoughts that seemed to miss the

bigger picture if but for a moment,

but was struck with a revulsion for myself.  Had I

already forgotten you with your basilisk eyes

and the reptile itself, forgetting how you teased me

and spoke in a soft, comforting tone as

you readied me to die?

I became fearful of the night; the day is my

safety, my comfort, my centre of gravity, and the

night is yours.  I wrote with you at night, with night you

sought to use my blood as bait and key, and at night

I feel you growing again, preparing to do

heaven knows what.

God grant me grace

when night falls.

Ginny.

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With thanks to She's a Star (twice!), raiining, and woww this is good (^^).  Thanks muchly!