A/N: …..life.
Some mumbled curse had been thrown at her; that was usual. She was surprised that a wad of spit hadn't hit her. How such simple things amazed her now. She hadn't seen her friend in a very long time. She figured he was dead.
She was dead. Or might as well be. Every day was another war waged on her mind. Nothing made sense anymore. Lucius was Satan. From the first day, he was the end of Ginny.
She laughed remembering that first run in. It was long ago, maybe. She lost tract of time. It was irrelevant. She was told something that wasn't so bad. She was embarrassed to even remember that. The supposed marriage. Her face blushed. A voice laughed.
She stuck her tongue out to no one. They watched her constantly now. The man behind the booth was someone she hadn't met yet; Lucius was far too busy to be there all the time. But anyway, back to the first meeting. Since then she had been told she was worthless, ugly, a rat, the scum of the Earth and things of that nature. Then out of nowhere Lucius would be nice, in his way at least. He would be the Lucius of the first meeting. She didn't know when he would be that way or why.
It was ruining her mind. To be told different things all at different times. She couldn't handle having Lucius laugh at her in his sick way but it was a waste of effort to fight back.
They had stopped the painful 'starting' process. She now had a cell with a bed and a bucket. It was the same room actually. There was no light. Nothing had color. She missed her room desperately. She still clung to that.
Steps! "Shit," she dove for her bed and faced the wall pretending to be asleep. It didn't matter. They would wake her up anyway. The door scraped open and the light from the hallway poured in, momentarily illuminating her opaque world. She had her eyes closed, and missed it. A tear ran down her dirty check. She couldn't remember the last time she had showered.
"Girl!" The voice yelled. It wasn't Lucius. She let out a sigh but didn't respond. "WENCH!" he threw the tray and it violently hit the wall. The door slammed closed and Ginny jumped up from the bed.
Her food was all over the floor. She ate the bread hastily and scraped up the thick cornmeal mixture from the floor. It was disgusting. She was starving. She wiped her mouth clean. No water today. That had been lost to the floor.
Some time later (5 minutes, an eternity who knows?) Lucius arrived. She was actually asleep and didn't notice him approach her bed. His eyes were boring into her skull. Suddenly he exploded with energy and ripped the thin sheet she used for a blanket off her. "Do you think this is some bloody game?" He screamed.
Ginny bolted up and pressed herself into the corner. "What do you-" she was silenced by slap across the face. Her eyes welled up with tears but she tried to hold them back.
"Look at you! Those tears only make you look more pathetic." He had a fever about him this time. Something had gotten in to him. Some idea, some notion and it meant all hell for Ginny. "What did you tell him?"
She was silent.
Another slap. He grabbed her by her bony shoulders, "Just what the bloody hell do you tell him!"
"I, I, I don't know what you mean," she managed to say.
Lucius sneered at her. Mockingly he said, "You, you, you, don't know what I mean." He sighed and thena moment later, his cool voice reasoned softly,"Of course not! You're just a stupid Weasley. How would you know?"
She stayed quiet. His grip was tightening. She would have some pretty fierce bruises. He was searching her eyes, her mind. Even in her own mind she could be watched. Slowly he let go of her. "I suppose you don't." He walked out.
Ginny sighed and used the end of her ratty shirt to wipe away the tears. She hated them. The man in the booth laughed. She flipped him off but it didn't matter. He would never see it, the room was too dark. She started to wonder why then was he there? Not having the energy to think about it any longer, Ginny went back to sleep.
tImE pAssEs
Ginny was never allowed to know what time it was. Everything happened in an instant and it only took that long to wait for. She wasn't allowed any sort of outside (nor inside) media. Not the Quibbler, nor the Daily Prophet nor even (to her great annoyance) Teen Witch Weekly. She hadn't been outside her cell since she awoke there who knows how long ago. The distortion of time was what made her confused the most. To keep her confused was a way to keep Ginny weak but damn it she wasn't going to stay that way.
Ginny sat on the upper part of her bed where the pillow lied. She leaned her back on one wall and her side on the other in a sort of fetal position. Most of her time was spent here. This is where she maintained the little bit of her sanity by drawing on the concrete wall. The fools that fed her gave her a metal spoon once, and after her meal she kept the spoon. Theend oppositeof theconcaveside was made fairly sharp by her scraping it against the wall. Like when a hard rock is run across a soft one, it made a white trail. So in her dark, dank cell, she created works of art that she would rarely see. But it didn't matter, because she could see them in her mind. Faith, in herself and others, was all she had.
Presently, she was reminiscing. She was thinking about the beginning of school, and about Winter Break. After a while she tried to remember everything that had happened here. Firstly, she had her feet bandaged, then came the talk about starting with her friend and then with Lucius. After that was a potpourri of events. Seeing as how she had nowhere to go and nothing to do she began the daunting task of organizing said events chronologically. After spending what seemed a dreadful amount of time she became severely frustrated and punched the wall.
"Shit!" she hissed in pain. 'Well, that was dumb,' she silently chided herself. She got out of her bed and walked to the door. Due to cheap building, the floor of the cell was uneven and this condition was very pronounced at the door where one side was 2 ½ centimeters deeper than the other. Thusly, this discrepancy allowed a puny stream of light in. Ginny brought her hand to the light and saw that she had scraped all of her knuckles minimally but had a deep cut on her pointer finger.
Going back to her bed, while sucking her finger, she stopped dead in her tracks. The cut was deep enough to cause a scab. Scabs took time to heal. By the looks of this scab, it would be there for a week, maybe. By this way, she figured, is how she would measure the time! She rushed to her bed and grabbed the spoon from the inside of her pillow. Slowly and carefully she carved a Roman numeral one above the cut. As she watched the blood slowly ooze from the one, Ginny began to laugh, "Now I know the time you bastards," she whispered.
TiMe PaSSeS
She was awoken by a piercing buzzer. Rolling on to her side that faced the tech's booth, she flipped the man off. He would do this to her periodically through her sleep. Waking her up just because he knew she needed to sleep. Sleep depravation is an excellent way to confuse someone. It didn't matter; she wanted to be awake anyway. She was excited about her drawing. A bit ago, when she had fallen asleep originally, her door was opened fully. And the entire wall was lit up. She opened her eyes and saw her work. It was sloppy and not symmetrical at all but she found it was amazing. The first portion was very shaky and the lines were bumpy. But as the drawing progressed on the writing became smooth and almost even. She couldn't analyze it for too long, the door closed. Strangely no one came in.
She traced her finger over the drawing, remembering every bit in perfect detail. Amide all this derangement she found a small slice of happiness. She was interrupted by a violent cough. She coughed into her elbow and spit out the mucous in her bucket. She was almost entirely sure she had Bronchitis and planned on letting Lucius know the next time she saw him by letting out a loud one.
Settling back into her bed she looked at her hand, where her first scab was, now practically gone. She reckoned that she would have to make her cuts deeper so they could scar. And if she would do this, then she would have to cut somewhere out of normal view. Ginny grabbed her spoon and went to work starting with her feet. But, because her shoes and socks had gone long ago, her feet were coarse and the skin was too thick. Taking a moment, she thought of other places out of view. She lifted her skirt up and rotated her leg. The skin on the inside of her leg was perfect. It was thin, it was delicate, and it would scar easy enough. On top of which, if she kept her legs together, even when totally naked, no one would see the inside of her thighs.
Going to the wall, she picked a spot away from her drawing and sharpened the end. She propped herself against the wall and placed her left leg on her right knee. Then she carved a small, deep, Roman numeral two. Compared to what she had previously endured, this was nothing; so she didn't even flinch when the cold, sharp spoon penetrated the warm, soft skin of her thigh.
Not too long after, the door opened. It was Lucius and it was about the only time Ginny was sort of happy to see him. She would have to bring up her cough. Lucius, however, had a different agenda. He walked to her bed and stood in front of her. His frame looked only the more imposing by the backlighting.
"Here." He shoved his hand into her chest.
Ginny looked down and saw a round something in it. She took it, as told, and found it to be a muffin. Why the hell would he give her a muffin?
"Even a Weasley knows what a muffin is. Eat."
She ripped a part off and ate it. It was delicious! But, then again, anything would be delicious to her at that point after all the damn cornmeal she was served. Without thinking she said, "Thank you."
Lucius raised his eyebrow and responded, "Well, well, even after all of this you still remember your manners."
She didn't know if this was good or bad. She didn't care and continued to eat her muffin.
Lucius watched her and then his attention turned to the wall. "And what do we have here?" He grabbed the head of the bed and pushed it towards the other wall. Ginny nearly fell off in the process. He stepped up, with his nose barely a millimeter away. "Eh, Weasely?" Just as she was about to answer, Lucius warned, "Do not lie to me."
"I get bored," she answered boldly.
His eyes turned away from the wall to her. "No quiver in your voice? No downward casting eyes? Not even the slightest hesitation?" He paused and leaned down to her face. She held his stare. After a moment he clicked his tongue, "You should know that it is rude to stare, Weasley. So much for your manners."
Not having the stamina to compete with him she lowered her eyes, "Sorry."
He stood up, "That is much better!" He began to walk away and Ginny promptly remembered what she wanted to say. She forced herself to cough and it did turn out to be a deep one. Lucius stopped and turned. "So your sick, eh? Perhaps that explains your audacious behavior."
"You ready?"
The normally red hue of the fire was now an emerald green. And with that strange light, Draco's face seemed to contort in a way to make him look very tired. Harry knew it was only because of the light. He stared into the embers in the fire that were well on their way to becoming ashes. He was pulled away from his fixation as Draco's voice asked (in a slightly annoyed voice) "Are. You. Ready?"
Harry took a breath and looked up at Draco. "Honestly, no." He took a second as Draco backed away from the fire place and they both notice the floo powder run out as the fire became red again.
"Okay." Draco turned around and plopped down on the adjacent chair. "What's up your dress, Potter?" A moment later, before Harry could answer, he added. "Please remember we are wasting time here."
Harry clenched his teeth, "I know. It's just that this…isn't a good idea."
Draco sighed and rose from the chair, "Merlin, Potter! Haven't we beaten this into the ground, already? Weasley trusts your judgment."
Harry said nothing. He looked at Draco trying to hide his thoughts. Draco had good practice at reading blank faces, however,so Harry had lost before he had even started.
"Oh, I see." Draco had adopted his usual icy manner. "You're good Potter. All this time I thought that you got over that sophomoric bullshit." He turned his back.
"No, that's not-" Harry began.
Draco turned around, "That is what this is!" His words were explosive and painfully true. "You don't trust me, STILL! Even after all the things I've done, all the crap I went through!" His steel eyes were bursting with hurt andincredulity.
"Draco, calm down." Harry tried to reason with him. But even he knew there was no reasoning with a guy with abruised pride. Trust was a tricky issue with, apparently, everyone.
Draco stepped up to Harry face, not even a meter away. "Don't," Draco laughed, "just don't."
"Look, I just can't let you come with me if you won't even admit the most obvious thing. Stop making this all my fault, and my doing. If you would get over yourself, Malfoy, then we would be well on our way to the Ministry," Harry returned in a voice so collected it was almost eerie.
Draco laughed, knowing full well what Harry meant. "How about taking your own damn advice, there Potter!"
"I've already admitted that had a bit of an ego, and I've already had to swallow my pride!" Harry answered, looking at Draco like he was idiot.
Now, it was Drano's turn to give Harry the 'you're and idiot' look. "That's, not what I meant." This was followed by his signature smirk.
A/N: It's short, I know. But it had to been done this way. Plus, you guys really needed an update. I had you worried. Just keep reading, I promise this isn't a poorly thought out idea. THANK YOU SOO MUCH!
MoonlightPrincess: I know! How weird is that? Please, bear with me, however painful. You're very appreciated.
Not so sour Lemons: Sorry about the extreme lateness of this update. Life kind of beat the shit out of me. But anyways, thank you for liking my story and for reviewing.
Next update: Methinks that next update will arrive during my Christmas break which is two weeks from now. Hopefully. If reviewed this goal WILL be met.
Love!