Author: RavenEcho
Summary: Ginny hurts. And no one knows. It's not easy being a number. Her number is zero, because that's how many people understand her…may become a Draco/Ginny or a Ginny/Severus, or a bit of both, depending. Some Ginny/Remus.
Disclaimer: If I owned this stuff, would I really be on typing away?
Touch Me
Chapter 6: My Rain; My Nightmare
When Ginny and Draco reached the portrait of the Fat Lady, the aforementioned lady wasn't there.
"Damn," Ginny muttered. "See, I would've been just fine sleeping back at the alcove if you hadn't of woken me up."
"Ginny, you were having a nightmare. Before I saw you, I thought a girl was being raped!"
Ginny scowled. "And since when do you care? You've probably done it before!"
Draco flinched. His face grew colder and he pulled up the sleeve of his robe. His skin was bare. "When my father got arrested, I got to make my own free choice. And I did." He pointed behind Ginny at the portrait guarding the Gryffindor entrance. "The Fat Lady's back. Good night, Weasley."
Ginny stared after Draco as he strode angrily away. She had an awful feeling that she had just pushed the blond Slytherin a little bit too far.
The next morning, Ginny woke up in an unusually chipper mood. She had slept well, and even though she hadn't gotten into bed until past 4:00- the party was still raging on when she entered the common room- she didn't feel all that tired. She had finished her Charms essay last night in an empty corner of the loud common room with a little bit of help from a tipsy Hermione.
Ginny's good mood lasted all the way until lunch, when she saw Draco at the Slytherin table with his housemates. He seemed to be in a rather nasty mood: all the people around him flinched whenever he said anything, seeming to have just been insulted. He connected gazes with her once, but only glared unforgiving into Ginny's brown eyes. That shot down the redhead's good humor instantaneously.
"What's up, Ginny?" Hermione asked from her left. "You look like someone's died."
Ginny shook her head. "Nothing, I was just thinking about my Arithmancy essay. I hope it was okay."
Hermione smiled encouragingly. "I read it over, Ginny. It was really good. I'm sure you'll do fine." With that she turned around and started to scold Ron about how he was eating.
Ginny rolled her eyes and stood up from the table. She was no longer in the mood for Gryffindor cheerfulness and optimism. Hermione didn't notice her leave.
Once she was out of the Great Hall, Ginny didn't know what to do. She still had forty-five minutes left until her next class. The girl shifted her bag on her shoulder and wandered towards the outside doors. She shoved one door open and saw that it was raining outside.
"Great," she muttered, walking outside into the downpour. "It about matches my current mood."
Ginny quickly stashed her books under a bush near the front doors so they wouldn't get soaked and made her way across the grounds towards the lake. She knew that if one of the Golden Trio were out here, they'd be on their way to Hagrid's cabin, but she had never gotten that close to Hagrid. Sure, they had chatted from time to time, and she had really hoped for Buckbeak's freedom in her second year, but Hagrid was Ron's friend. Not hers.
Instead, Ginny settled on rock that was on the very edge of the lake and stared hard at the grayish water. It seemed alive because of the rain pounding into it, making it give way to the hard pellets of water. Ginny hugged her knees to her chest and slid up her sleeve, surveying the scars dancing across her arm. She snatched up a sharp rock from the ground and twisted it into her white skin. With a bit of work, the wound dribbled out a few droplets of scarlet blood.
"That's my rain," Ginny murmured to herself, watching the blood slowly slide across her ivory flesh. She slammed the rock against her own arm just above the cut she had made. It immediately began to show the bruise because of how fair her skin was. "That's my thunder cloud," she explained to the air surrounding her. She scraped the rock against her skin again, this time in a zigzag. "That's my lightning," she said, smiling slightly when a white bolt of lightning tore across the black sky above, followed closely by a torrent of thunder.
In a sudden swing of anger, Ginny threw the rock as hard as she could at a tree that was also near the lake's shore, and only about a yard away from her. Ginny tugged mercilessly at her own hair in frustration and stood up restlessly. She couldn't decide what it was that made her so angry; she just knew that she was alone here, alone in the pouring rain.
She was alone in her living nightmare, and Draco wasn't there to wake her up this time. With a frustrated sob, the girl sank to her knees and screamed her wrath and sadness into the ground.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I know, I know, all this wait, and then it's a short wimpy little half-assed chapter. Well, I blame……. YOU! Hahaha….. well, I suppose I could really do that too, seeing as I only got two reviews… really depressing actually. And even if only getting two reviews isn't a good enough excuse for my delay, you know what? I'M THE BLOODY AUTHOR! So, I can blame whatever I please…so there. Deal with it. Review more, while you're at it.
REVIEW RESPONSES: Thank you EternalEcho, and thank you Dakangl… I was going to completely give up hope, even take the story off the web, but your review Dakangl, and Tiffany your pestering, made me post instead. Happy reading, my two dear reviewers, please feel free to work your magic again.