I walk slowly down the stairs and into the common room, my eyes adjusting to the dim, flickering light of the fire. I spot her in the corner, head down and quill scratching way at the parchment. She's concentrating so hard that she doesn't hear me walk over to her. I stand and watch her for a while. Her brow is furrowed from concentration and her hair falls haphazardly over her face and work. .

'You know you really shouldn't leave your essays to the last minute.'

Her head snaps up at my words and once again I see fear in her eyes. I sit down on an armchair facing her and try again to start a conversation.

'What's wrong Ginny? I don't understand what's happening with you.'

She looks deep in my eyes and I see a small spark of the confidence and conviction she used to have.

'Nothings happening. Nothings wrong. I'm fine.' With that she looks back down at her work, trying to end the conversation.

I get annoyed at this. I stand suddenly, almost throwing the chair backwards in the process. I stride forwards and grab her wrist, probably a little too roughly as she winces and tries to shake me off. I force her sleeve back angrily to reveal knew cuts across her pale skin, along with the remains of those I had tried to heal a week ago. She cringes when I grab her and I see some of the wounds open slightly with the force but by now I'm so angry that I barely notice

'This doesn't look like nothing Ginny. This looks like quite a big fucking deal actually!' I practically scream at her.

She looks at me wide eyed and her face seems almost guilty. It surprises me so much that I drop her hand and half stumble backwards.

'I'm sorry', I look up at her as she says this. It's not what I was expecting. 'I'm sorry about all of this'

She sounds so sad when she says this that I feel like crying. I just want to be able to stop this pain but she is looking away again and it feels like she's trying to shut me out again.

I look up at her and I see one small tear tracing its way down her cheek. I walk back to her, much more gently than before, and pull her into a hug. She seems to relax in my arms and I can hear her crying softly into my shoulder. I don't know quite what to do because she seems so fragile and so different from the confident Ginny that I knew. I choose to just hold her until she is ready to talk.

I feel her tears soaking through the shoulder of my shirt and I feel her arms around me like she's clinging on for dear life. I try to remember what she was like before, after her first year at Hogwarts. I remember her being angry and ashamed but she never seemed this scared or guilty. When she cut herself before it wasn't this bad. Part of what she did was just her being a certain age and feeling certain things. She half-joked about the damage she was doing to herself. Now it scares me, much more than before.