A Dose of Green and Snakes
By Dimgwrthien
Disclaimer: I do not own anything pertaining to the Harry Potter series or affiliates. Please do not sue.
Author's Notes: This is to my lovely friend, ElanorSarah.
I sat in front of the attractive, young woman, watching her closely as she sat. She took great care in sitting, taking the edges of her long coat and shifting them before sitting. Her thin legs crossed, as did her arms.
"Name?" I asked her calmly. I hate dealing with these types of people. They all have the same problem. However, I gently wrote down the name with the ball-point pen, sighing when it let out a dribble of blue ink, staining a paper.
"Alright. I need you to talk to me." Damn fool. As if she would even open her mouth. They never do. However, her once cherry-red lips opened. They looked chapped, as though she had not taken a drink or even moved them in days. My guess was that she hadn't.
"I'll talk," she whispered. For such a pretty thing, she sounded old. Too old.
"Tell me…" I thought for a moment. If I asked her what had happened to land her in the office with me, she would panic. I started slowly. "Tell me what's been going on. Sleeping well? Eating enough?"
"I can't sleep," she admitted. I could tell. Dark shadows lined her brown eyes, making the light shading of eye shadow rather pointless. "I have nightmares every night."
"What happens in these nightmares?" I scribble down a line or two, letting the pen lead the way. I'll be damned if I need some sort of notes to tell her the problem. I knew it the second I saw her.
The woman just shook her head and took a long breath. I saw her hands shake slightly as they fiddled with the edge of her coat. "They begin with snakes. Then I see him and a flash of green. Though, the green fades and I see them both, there. Sometimes they're still standing, connected by a little, golden beam. It spreads, and I'm taken into it. Sometimes, both of them are on the ground. Dead."
"Who are these people?" I had only gotten a bit of information. Damn those idiots who sent her to me. A joke, I bet. She had to be one of the actresses from down the road, at the theater. She was certainly a good one, though, as her eyes were lined with tears when she looked up at me.
"Anything else?" I ask lazily.
"Whenever I think of that day, I feel -" She looks embarrassed, but I snap my fingers at her so that she stars around wildly before finishing. "I feel like my heart is pumping every last drop of blood through me. My blood is ice and becomes colder and colder as it hits me, until I feel like I've died."
She spoke with no emotion. It still terrifies me after the meeting.
I pat the edge of the desk, sighing as though I really cared. "Sorry," I drawled, staring over at the yellowing plant in the corner. I would have to give it water soon. "Anything else?"
A shake of the head. Finally. I was glad to end the meeting, so I asked the final question. "Tell me, what happened then?"
"Death," she answered simply. "Plenty of it."
"Were you in a war?"
A strand of hair fell into her brown eyes, and she pulled it away slowly, trying to avoid the question. "It wasn't so much a war as an excuse for death," she whispered.
"All wars are, dear," I told her calmly. She said nothing. "Who died there? How many people?"
"All of them died," she whispered. "I was the only one left. Hermione and Ron and - and Bill and Charlie." a choked sob escaped her throat as she bent double. The white coat, tied tightly around her arms and stomach, did not let her move too far down.
"Who are these people?" The story is too juicy to miss.
"Friends, family," she whispered. "Enemies. Everyone went."
"How did they all die except for you?" I asked skeptically. It was no longer a wonder why she was here. She had no mind.
"I dunno." She stared me in the eye, and I felt aware that I must have been glaring and snarling at her. I hated these people. "There was the golden beam from my dream and - and they all fell down."
I was reminded of when my two little girls played a silly game, tumbling into the grass at the end. I wanted to get home to them badly, so I tried to speed up the conversation.
"Miss, have you ever thought that you may only be imagining it?" The truth may have sounded harsh, but God, I wanted to leave.
She acted violently. The chair fell over as she stood, hands still clutched around her coat. "I'm not insane!" she yelled at me, eyes wide in disbelief. When she tried to come toward me, I had to hold out a large paper with a stamp on it.
"You can't come closer," I told her calmly, and she just stared at the paper as though reading it. Her mouth formed the words until she sat on the ground, unable to set the chair up again because of the way she held her coat.
"You can't threaten me with a paper," she hissed from the ground, looking for all the world like a pathetic bag of bones. "I've seen so much - heard so much, that you could only imagine. My friends all died, whether you believe it or not with that damned clipboard! I don't need any of this -"
"You were found, wondering in a field with no dead bodies in sight, screaming," I answered blandly.
She kicked the desk, earning herself what I imagined to be a pained foot. She wore no shoes. "I was there," she spat, "but you're all too stupid to realize that what I am trying to say is to help you, not land me in this place."
Her eyes seem so much more sunken to me, but they had a reason. There was a reason for why her lips were chapped, and a reason for why I saw a few strands of white hair in the mass of red.
Ginevera Weasley was the strangest patient at the asylum I had ever met.