She is sitting at the vanity when he stumbles in. Brushing her red hair in long, smooth strokes. She doesn't even look away from her reflection. Her eyes are too busy tracing over the fresh bruise on her cheekbone.

She hears his footsteps pounding toward their room. The door opens, and he steps in. She sees him in the mirror, the only way she feels brave enough to look at him anymore. His eyes are bloodshot again, and he is shaking. This is a common occurrence since the end of the War, but still, it always scares her. She never knows what is coming, or why something like sugar is caked on the tip of his nose.

"Good evening, Harry," she says softly. She never dares to raise her voice anymore.

He grunts a response, shuffling around the room and jerking his hand toward every object they own. She steels herself to keep from flinching. The motion looks so much like a punch.

When he finally looks at her, it is with a familiar heat that turns her stomach and causes her to unconsciously tighten her robe around her. A futile gesture, one of self-defense. When she knows very well she has no defenses he cannot pass through.

"Why do you think so ill of me, Ginny?" he asks, his voice too high and too smooth. She hates it when he does this. It isn't right, for him to be able to rip into her mind like this. It is unfair and invasive and perverse and everything he never used to be.

"I don't," she replies, trying hard to block her thoughts. Failing. She never was as strong as people gave her credit for.

"Don't lie." His voice is a growl, and she is reminded so strongly of Tom that she would fall off the chair if this were a new happening. But it is not. Not anymore. Not even close.

And then he is on her. In a flash. His hands gripping her small wrists and pulling her up, onto unstable feet, and pressing her tight against him. She whimpers. "Harry, you're hurting me."

But he smiles that crooked smile and his eyes flash behind his glasses and she knows that hurting her no longer matters to him at all.

Her clothes are off in seconds. The thin layer of silk ripping in two and floating gracefully to the floor. He is looming over her and she recalls with bitterness the first time she saw him like this, felt him like this, and how it was nothing like this.

He laughs when she cries out in pain. So rough. So large, and so powerful, and so rough. He doesn't even give her a chance to adjust. He is groaning and grunting in pleasure as tears of pain leak down her cheeks and blood that should not be spilling is dripping down her milky thighs.

She closes her eyes and tries to rationalize. This isn't Harry, this isn't Harry. It will be alright in the morning. This isn't Harry.

But it is. And it won't. And no amount of charms or pleas will make it any different.

So she stops fighting. Stops squirming beneath him, trying to push his weight off of her. She stares at the ceiling and feels the blood and tears drip, drip, drip, and accepts her fate.

She was always his. If this is what that means, she will accept it. She was always his. And she always will be.

fin