A Lifetime of Lies
Chapter One
My So-Called Life
She threw herself down on the sofa without any trace of gracefulness. With a glance at the book that she had brought with her she cast it aside without another thought. She wasn't in the mood to read. Going on adventures through literature seemed to depress her anymore. So she sat back and looked at the clock. It was noon.
Only noon, she thought sadly. It would be seven more hours until she had another human being to converse with. Her last baby had gone to Hogwarts with his other two siblings, she was alone now. No one to look after, no one to need her. She had all ready finished her daily cleaning and had dinner preparations done until five thirty when she would actually begin the meal. There was nothing left to do. Seven hours. Her loneliness loomed over her like a dark rain cloud.
Her eyes slid shut and she thought of the thing that always brought a smile to her face, her children. She had had her first child at twenty-one and she could still remember the feeling of being home alone with her child for the first time. That panic that had settled around her chest that something was going to happen, something was going to go wrong and no one would be here to help her. She was completely and utterly responsible for another human life and that realization terrified her. She was going to mess up, she just knew it. She would do something horrible that would scar the poor child for life.
She had walked on egg shells around her own child and treated Lily as if she were made out of glass. Lily. Ginny hadn't wanted to name her that. She knew that Harry had wanted to honor the mother that he couldn't remember…but it was really a dreadful name. To go through life named after a flower seemed awful to her. She had never had the heart to start the name fight though; she had wanted so desperately to make Harry happy. So she allowed him to be the sole ruler of the name game. Lily was a good name though, she told herself now, it fit her eldest child. Ginny felt her eyes growing heavier as she had that thought, it really didn't fit her girl. Lily Potter was not the sweet-tempered girl that her name suggested. She had inherited the Weasley fiery red hair and the temper to match it. She was loud, didn't ever think of others, and was--to Harry's everlasting horror--a Slytherin.
Ginny loved her daughter and knew that she would easily lay down her own life for her, but that didn't make her blind to her faults. She belonged in Slytherin, but that didn't make her bad, or evil, or any of the other stereotypes that were placed on the house. Ginny had known for a long while that not all Slytherins were as mean-spirited as they seemed…she shook off thoughts of her life as a girl, it was no use to reflect on meaningless things that no one remembered besides herself.
Lily, she reminded herself firmly, she was thinking of Lily. Her daughter possessed many of the traits that the house was famous for though, she was cunning, smart, and self-reliant. She looked like her mother and had the nature of…no one else in her family. She had heart though, and she loved those around her more than she cared to admit. She was constantly looking out, and sticking up for, her younger brothers. Her younger Gryffindor brothers. So that was saying something.
Ginny had always felt a fierce mixture of love and frustration for her daughter. Her boys though, they were poster children for a healthy household. They were considerate, kind, and extremely perceptive and conscious of other's feelings. In short, they were Harry. Even in looks there was no denying that her husband's genes had reigned supreme in the making of those boys.
Her eldest son, Dante--she had set her foot down when Harry had wanted to call the boy James--was the antithesis of his sister. They should have fought like cats and dogs throughout their childhood, it would have only made sense, but somehow their extreme differences complimented each other. They got along splendidly and each seemed to live to protect the other.
Finally her last child, Cyrus, was the quietest one of the bunch. He didn't fight with his siblings, but neither did he have anywhere close to the relationship with either of them that they seemed to have with each other. Ginny's daughter was willful and stubborn and her first son was clingy towards his sister. She had thought that maybe this would be the child that would form a special bond with her. The one that would need her as her first two children needed each other. Cyrus didn't seem to need anyone though. He wasn't dismissive and never pushed her away, he just seemed to prefer the company of himself to anyone else.
It broke her heart and made her feel incredibly selfish that her children loved her, but would not miss too many steps in their lives if she weren't around. Her thoughts drifted towards her husband…she sometimes wondered if he would even notice if she went missing. She nearly snorted, of course he would notice, there would be no dinner for him and his laundry wouldn't get done. She loved Harry, she did, it was just that she had become somewhat of his live in maid over the course of their marriage.
She had always told herself that if she got married it would be an equal partnership. She would have a job; she would bring in things to her family other than culinary and domestic skills. But Harry had a high paying job at the Ministry…and she had been pregnant by the time that they were married. It had just seemed like it would be selfish and radical of her to get a job when they had no need for the money and she was needed at home by her child, and then children.
So she stayed at home, silently telling herself that when her children were old enough she would venture into the workplace and do the things that she had always wanted to do. She was now thirty-five though, and she had never held a real job…no one would hire her. Harry had offered her the open position as his secretary, but Ginny knew she couldn't deal with that. She had gotten good marks at Hogwarts, she was smart enough. But she was getting older, and with no experience to speak of the job market presented a scary picture indeed.
A half an hour had passed. Six and a half hours to go until…until her husband came home. Ginny realized how pathetically sad that sounded. Her life now revolved around her husband, her children didn't need her so she adjusted her life to accommodate Harry's every move. It wasn't his fault she had fallen into this pit of depression, she had placed herself here.
Sometimes she couldn't help but wonder though, on the rare occasion that she allowed her mind to drift to that dusty place of her mental memory box, what if she had chose differently? What if she hadn't been such a coward, what if she hadn't taken the easy way out?
Her life seemed so dull on the surface. A million women before her had lived out the life she was living. The typical mother, live for your family rather than yourself. But it hadn't always been this way. There was a time that she had been well on her way to living a life of defiance, a life on the edge.
He had loved her. He had loved her in the way that she had always dreamed of being loved, that reckless forget-about-tomorrow-because-I-love-you-today sort of way…the way she had been waiting fifteen years for Harry to love her. She knew that her husband loved her, but he always held a piece of himself back. She was never allowed to see everything; she was never allowed to be the other half of his soul. He loved her the only way that he knew how, with restriction.
It wasn't his fault, she had always reasoned, he had never known real love growing up. He was afraid of his love being rejected. But the man of her youth, that dark shadow that hung over her detached romantic views, he had known absolutely no love at all before hers…and he had loved her to distraction without fear, without withdrawal. To her utter surprise and dismay she felt tears stinging her eyes. She hadn't allowed herself to cry over her past in years. She had chosen her path; she was determined to be happy in that decision. But she just couldn't help but wonder…what if she had married Draco instead?
Ginny didn't even bother to reprimand herself, she had six hours, she would indulge herself just this one time. She would reflect and imagine and then he would be out of her system for good. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to slip away.