The Color of Blood
Disclaimer: I own the plot and original concepts, characters, etc. Everything else belongs to its respective creator(s).
Ginny Weasley sighed, turning on her back in the spacious four-poster bed with deep red velvet hangings, a jewel color, the color of rubies…
…The color of blood…
That unprecedented thought startled Ginny almost to the point where she literally jumped. The ancient mahogany wood creaked and groaned under the fluffy white mattress because of the sudden, unexplained movement, complaining like an old greybeard or blue-hair with an aching back and rheumy joints.
She thought of Tom for some reason. It had been his sinister voice in her mind, reminding her of blood.
Rip, tear, kill… I want blood!
She could hear the demands of the basilisk echoing in her mind.
A surge of hatred raced through Ginny, and she suddenly felt unclean. Savagely, she grabbed up fresh knickers and pyjamas, stripping before she even got to the bathroom. Taking off her bra, she turned on the shower and grabbed her stuff out of the shelf labelled with her name. Ginny squeezed a generous amount of liquid shampoo onto the palm of her hand and lathered up her long red hair furiously.
In a melancholy, hypnotized way, she absentmindedly traced over the pale scars criss-crossing her abdomen with her index finger, the sensation of her fingernail dragging lightly across the sensitive flesh sending goose bumps tingling hotly on her body from her roots of her hair to the tips of her toes.
Ginny scoffed at herself. She felt ridiculous. Tom was long gone, done and over with. There was no reason that she should be thinking about him, even if she had once fancied herself in love with him. Harry had saved her from Tom. She was in love with Harry. And she hadn't loved Tom, she finalized as she rinsed a creamy conditioner out of her hair with a wide-toothed comb.
To think she'd thought she'd been in love with him…
It disgusted her. She rubbed the exfoliating bath pouf harder on her skin, making it a livid red that rivalled her brilliant hair. He'd hurt her so much, deliberately, in the Chamber. It sickened her, the fact that she'd only realized what a fool she'd been to be so infatuated with him.
Chewing on her innocent body, saliva and blood everywhere, lapping at her most intimate parts, his sadistic joy as he took a sharpened quill and carved onto the hairless skin where her pubic hair had just started to grow. She'd been disgusted with it, shaving it off instantly and putting a potion on it that promised no hair ever would grow there again. Ginny had regretted it when he delighted over it, crowed over it, mocking her. He had repeated the words she'd written about it in the diary cruelly, jeering at her as he pushed in a long finger, then a longer appendage exclusive to the masculine sex.
"Ew, Tom, I have hair down there. It's so gross. I shaved it off and put Madame Venus's Guaranteed Permanent Hair Removal Potion on it."
He'd said this in a high, spiteful falsetto.
Ginny snapped out of her reverie, eyes finding the scars. It was upside-down, but she knew what he'd branded onto it by heart. She'd seen the blood of it on her panties when she'd changed clothes on that fateful night and had seen the clear-cut outline of it as she sobbed, gazing at the mirror with bloodshot, swollen eyes.
The Dark Mark had gazed calmly back at her, the sinister snake protruding from the mouth and flicking over her clitoris. Ginny remembered her howls of pain as he'd made a neat incision into the most sensitive of her female flesh.
"No, no, no, Tom, it hurts! Stop! Please, Tom, it hurts so much! Stop it! Oh, God, oh, God, no, it hurts so much! No, my God, no! Aah! No! Please, no! Tom! Tom! No, no, ungh, no!"
Anger hardened Ginny's steam-dampened face as she walked out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her waist. She shouldn't have had to beg for mercy to get him to stop torturing her. He'd even sliced up the flat plain of her chest with the quill, putting puncture wounds on the tiny buds of her pink-brown nipples. Her breasts bore pale whitish pink scars from that. Thin and of varied length, some of the scars went beyond her rib cage to the taut skin of her belly.
Red misted over her eyes as they started to glaze, her mind sinking into another retrospection.
"Such a cute tummy," Tom told her in an overly honeyed, saccharine voice. He'd put in all the sugar to disguise the venom. "I think I'll pierce your little belly button, little girl. What would mummy say when she found out? Would she give naughty Ginny a spank?"
Laughing sadistically, he gouged the quill into the skin above her navel, stifling her whimpers by dunking her head under the water, pulling down on her red hair to keep her from coming up. Bubbles came up, streaming from her nostrils and mouth. Wordlessly conjuring up an earring, he'd stuck it through the pierced hole, then did the same with her clitoris. The diamonds glinted coldly in the torchlight. He let go of her hair, and she came up, spluttering and gasping for air.
Tearfully, she stared at her bed hangings, thinking that they were the sanguine color of blood.
Her blood…