A.N.: Chapter 6, AT LAST! Hope you enjoy it! Read and review, please! I feed on reviews!
Shadowy Corner, your reviews were great! Thank you very much! And I have nothing against constructive criticism:) I welcome it, actually!
Chapter 6 – Us Two
I gaze into your eyes… They're beautiful, those jade green eyes, flickering with anger, sparkling with love… Either full of innocent light, or dimmed by dark shadows of sadness, they're beautiful, my love… beautiful and calming… Why do you flee from me? Why do you hide your look in fade notebooks and papers? You can't understand… You can't understand that all my power stands in the warmth of your gaze… Oh no, my angel, you can't understand… and you lower your head, avoiding the questions in my eyes…
And how I'd wish to seize your lips with my own… But you clutch them, locking all your emotions under the placid mask of a grimace. That's when I bite my own lips, restraining them from caressing yours…
I feel like crying, and I run away… You can't understand… You think I'm running away from you, but it's myself whom I'm running away from… I stare out the window, fixing my gaze on a dead leaf… I feel like crying… Tears come to my eyes, burning holes deep inside my soul… You can't understand why I'm crying… You never will…
'Why do you like hurting yourself?' you ask, your voice trembling, glaring over my shoulder, avoiding my gaze, feeling hurt, knowing you're the one hurting me… That's when your words tear my heart into small pieces…
'Why do other people have to tell you what you've got to do?' your voice dies out, your whole being showing pain and renunciation… That's when life loses meaning to me… because you can't understand… because you ask me to give up… because you can't understand that you're asking me to give up on myself…
My love, why can't you accept the fact that I'm yours, that away from you I'm only a damp body, a lost soul? … You can't understand…
I want to hold your hands, to clutch tightly to your warm body, to cry right then, right there, in your arms… But you turn away and I feel like falling on my knees, allowing the earth to claim my blood and flesh… But the earth has no right upon that which is yours… So I simply cry, blind to anything else than your fading silhouette, deaf to anything else than the echo of your voice, recalling your sour scent…
But that, my small angel, you can't understand… Can you?
Ginny would cry… Cry like crazy, cry for hours, cry locked up inside a cubicle in the deserted ladies' room, which now only the gloomy specter of Moaning Myrtle would visit from time to time, to commemorate the brief moment of her own sad death…
Ginny would cry and yell at a Harry that only existed in her mind… She'd yell at a Harry Potter with broken spectacles and vivid green eyes… She'd yell at her Harry, and it felt like yelling at herself… But the figure hunting the school grounds was not her Harry Potter. Not the Harry Potter she used to know, at least. It was just a boy with a messed-up mind.
Ginny would cry and cry and her tears would fall on the fragile piece of parchment she was holding on her knees. And her sobs were louder and louder as she wrote with the beautiful, black muggle pen Harry had given her on her last birthday. Ginny always took it with her, everywhere she went, along with a piece of parchment. Because she always needed to write. She'd write during boring History of Magic classes, during Quidditch matches between other Houses, during breakfast and dinner. She'd write about spring and autumn, about Ron and Hermione, about a pair of gorgeous green eyes… She always wrote about those eyes… But she would have never thought she'd write about how those eyes made her cry, about how those eyes were cold and merciless.
"I'll never forgive you…" she whispered faintly, closing her eyes, kicking the wall with her right foot, knowing she would never in fact be angry with him.
"I despise you, Harry Potter…" she murmured, knowing she shall forever adore him.
"I love you, you fool!" she yelled, and then her mind went blank.
Moaning Myrtle watched the girl from above, in silence, regretting she had never truly loved during those years she lived. The ghost just floated there, at the height of the ceiling, for the first time not moaning, for the first time not speaking, for the first time looking sad for something else than having died.
Ginny hadn't noticed Myrtle. She hadn't noticed her hair sliding out of her ponytail, falling wild on her shoulders, covering part of her face. She hadn't noticed her parchment was now soaked in her tears. She hadn't noticed she was touching her lips with the tips of her fingers.
"I had never imagined our first kiss would be like that…" she said to herself, smiling wryly. "But now at least I have my kiss…" she added, her voice exploding into a nervous laughter.
"Stupid, stupid, STUPID! Fool, fool, FOOL! You great NUTCASE!" Harry stepped hurriedly and heavily along the deserted hallway, hitting his head with his fists, having a row with himself.
Not at all interested in the red ruby eyes that stared at him menacingly from the white marble statues lined along the walls, the skinny young man passed like a living storm through the silent castle… much too silent castle. In moments like that, Harry didn't need silence – actually, it even frightened him at some point. He needed a couple of cheerful pals offering him a small glass of Butterbeer, telling him all over again that "women are nothing than trouble". That's what he needed to hear – something awful about Ginny, something to transform all his guilt into a feeling as low as disgust. He was a coward this Harry Potter. Yes, he was a coward when it came to girls, and he admitted it.
"You bastard!" he muttered to himself, wishing he would have thrown himself into the icy waters of the lake when he had had the opportunity. "Bastard."
Images, lots of blurry images were racing through his head, and all of them, absolutely all of them were the images of Ginny: Ginny waving him good-bye from the platform, Ginny, blushing at the Burrow, Ginny laughing, Ginny dancing with Neville at the Yule Ball, Ginny snogging with Michael Corner, Ginny running away, frozen leaves cracking under the pressure of her feet… It had all been about Ginny, all along, and he hadn't even known it! Now he realized it, because there, on the edge of the lake, then, when he was sure he had no feelings of no sorts anymore, right then and there --- he had felt… felt like never before, felt like being reborn from his own ashes. That's what he had felt when he had kissed the poor girl so violently. And now he was afraid his last flame had consumed Ginny, too, burning her wings, leaving her empty.
Harry didn't know what to do, like he never knew what to do when he made a mistake and found himself all alone, facing it. Reaching the end of the hallway he was hesitating whether to go find Ron or Hermione and tell them what had happened, or look for Ginny and fall to his knees to ask for forgiveness. But his choice was soon made when a high-pitched voice yelled from behind him, from where the tall, gray wall sustained the ceiling:
"Potter, you miserable ass, MOVE your stinking legs to that poor CREATURE!"
"My-Myrtle?"
"YES! Now go deal with poor Ginny, you GIT! Men are all the same…"
"B-but where is she?" Harry asked in a faint voice.
"In my bathroom of course! Now GO!"
And Harry didn't need another word. He raced down the stairs which, unfortunately, started to move just when he was reaching the floor he had to go to, so he made a foolish jump, got a few scratches in the process and raced again up to the deserted bathroom at whose door he stopped to catch his breath. He then slowly pushed the door, cautiously stepping in.
Inside the round room he could hear silent sobs, coming from a cubicle in front of him. Harry felt his heart racing and he knew what he had to do to catch up with it. He carefully stepped forward, the sound of his feet on the floor seeming so disturbing to the almost silent place.
"Gin...?" he got himself to ask in a low, trembling voice, while opening the small door of the cubicle. The image in front of him made his mind collapse: he'd never seen a scared Ginny with puffy, red eyes and torn robe before. And Ginny herself had never seen such a confused Harry previously.
"Ginny, I..."
"Sorry, sorry..." the girl mumbled, jumping up on her feet, pulling her hair back in a messy ponytail and readjusting her clothes, all in the blink of an eye.
"Sorry for what? I'm the one who must apologize!" the young man looked down, ashamed, surprised, consumed. Shattered.
"I overreacted. You... you shouldn't have seen me like this..." it was Ginevra's turn to look down, afraid to catch his eye.
"I'm so sorry!" Harry burst out and reached for her, still avoiding her gaze, his cheeks burning red, his heart racing faster.
Ginny hesitated. She wanted to run away, but she didn't. She just fell into his arms like a desperate, clutching tightly to his clothes and sobbing as if Heaven and Hell had collapsed upon her.
"I'm sorry..." she whispered, clinging to his chest as for dear life.
"Ginny... My Ginny..." he felt tears coming to his eyes, he felt so ashamed that he was letting her apologize again and again when the fault was his. "My Ginny, please, stop crying... Let's get you out of here..." he placed one arm around her shoulders and slowly guided her away. Away from Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, away from themselves and away from that painful day... Simply away...
"Ron..."
"Hermione..." the young man said matter-of-factly.
They'd been staring at each other for at least five minutes now, none of them able to speak out any words. But maybe they just didn't need any. Both of them knew what they were there for. Each knew what the other wanted. So why bother to speak, when you can simply stare?
"I can't do this..." she said, almost turning away.
"But I can." He grasped her arm, pulling her closer. Way closer. She stared. And gasped.
"I think I... I..."
"Me too..."
Their lips came together and they stood like that for what seemed like ages... They were each other's.
Draco was all alone in his dormitory and silence hurt him like he never thought it would. He held his head in both his hands...
"No, no, NO!"
Visions of the Dark Lord kept coming back to his mind and he couldn't send them away. It was all torturing him, his meeting with Voldemort coming back to him, maddening him.
"I don't want to live this life... I don't want to live this life..." he repeated to himself, maybe to break the silence, or maybe in sheer despair.
"...usssss two for ever…" Those words made Draco want to disappear. Those words were terror. Draco knew what a Dark Mark meant. And he wasn't going to let them give him one... at all costs.
