NOTES: Written for the Slash_Challenge Community on Livejournal, 5th week challenge: Ginny
plants a flower out in the garden.
Sinking
"I can still feel him, y'know."
"What?" instead of 'who?'. Of course she'd know.
The flower gnawed on her finger even through the thick garden glove. Damned Abyssinian shrivelfigs. She dropped the plant in the hole she'd just made for it and smoothed the earth around it using her boot, with careful stomps lest the horrid thing bite her again. "There!"
Hermione folded her arms with a swish of her Head Girl robes. "What do you mean you can still feel him?"
"Erm," Ginny bit her lip. She had known she shouldn't have said anything. Not to her. "Sometimes. Sometimes... like a shadow, digging its claws into my mind."
Hermione tilted her head and pouted her lips, lost in thought. Ginny wrung her hands in disquietude, feeling the bones of her thin wrists sliding under the skin. A lightning parted the skies in the distance and made her shiver.
Hermione finally seemed to settle on something. "Is this your excuse for getting the detention?"
Ginny gasped and could feel all the colour draining from her face, her features frozen in a rictus of startled alarm. She'd been expecting concern for her well-being, perhaps even a little compassion. Not this hard and calculating look. This wasn't the Hermione she knew. Draping her robes more tightly about her she hunched her shoulders against the wind growing more intense by the moment. "Could we go inside?" Ginny finally managed through her clattering teeth. "It's starting to get pretty cold out here."
Hermione nodded curtly and lead the way towards the nearest greenhouse, her bushy hair and robes billowing in the gusts.
Once inside, they searched for a comfortable place to wait the storm out. The light had fled, making the air thicker and seemingly darker than it would have been in the middle of the night - or it would have if it hadn't been for the flashes that came and went more frequently now.
Hermione slumped down next to one of the elevated flowerbeds, Ginny swiftly following her example. She still looked at the younger girl with the same kind of pertinacious expression she would have a delectably interesting puzzle.
And then came the rain.
Heavy droplets fell from the heavens, drumming against the glass-covered roof like too-quick heartbeats, their hollow vibrato echoing louder than either girl had ever experienced. Still trembling from the cold Ginny inched closer to Hermione before reluctantly picking up the conversation.
"I haven't had anyone to talk about it, not really. How ever sordid, manipulated, disgusting, painful it was... it was the first time I'd ever been in love. I don't think things like that can ever really be forgotten," she stopped to feign a tired grin before continuing: "And I got the detention because Pansy Parkinson was being a great, big cow."
"But you can't feel V-voldemort's presence or hear his thoughts?" Ginny managed to shake her head feebly through the tremor that travelled from the base of her spine to the tips of her fingers at actually hearing the name. Hermione held out her arm and pulling the other girl closer laid Ginny's head gently against her shoulder, absently stroking her long, red hair.
"None of it was your fault, you have to know that. Never your fault," she stopped and looked pensive for a moment. "Eventually the rain will end."
Ginny nuzzled her face in the cusp of Hermione's neck, breathing in her distinctive scent of pomegranate and chestnut and vanilla, sighing softly as the rain faded into a weak sonance and the thunder became a but distant rumble.
The world seemed a different colour just then. But for some reason, it smelled brand new as well.