Dumbledore made numerous platitudes that she was most certainly not a werewolf, simply that ritualistic magic was always tied to the lunar phases, and gave her the date of the New Moon. It fell on June 19th, just eighteen days away from now. He had then swept away from the Hospital Wing, humming another jaunty tune, seemingly satisfied at the conversation. He took the Diary with him, which Ginny was thankful for.
Before he left, he told her that she would be returning to The Burrow earlier than everyone else. Ginny didn't really know why he wanted that, perhaps he thought it would do her some good to get away from the castle for a bit. Ginny certainly wasn't opposed to that, but the idea of facing her family was a discomfiting one.
After a while of Ginny contemplating her conversation with Dumbledore, Madam Pomfrey had come back over and had began fussing with her bandages. The skin beneath the bandages revealed itself to be red-raw, but seemingly healed. Her nails were much shorter than usual, but looked to be in good health, unchipped. Madam Pomfrey had strictly instructed her to limit use of her hands for the next few days, so she wouldn't be writing many letters.
Professor McGonagall had eventually swung by, lips tight as always, an indeterminable expression on her face. She beckoned Ginny to come with her stiffly, and Ginny, worrying at her lip, had followed. She hadn't had the easiest time of it, stumbling and exerting her sore muscles in order to keep up with the tall witch's brisk stride.
They eventually came to a door only slightly familiar to Ginny, which she believed to be McGonagall's office. And now Ginny hovers doubtfully, off to the side as McGonagall mutters a phrase, which makes the door open with a small click.
Noise filters into the hallway from the room, hushed voices arguing with each other, which halts as the occupants of the room realize McGonagall's arrival. McGonagall steps into the room, and Ginny scampers to follow her in, nearly crashing into McGonagall's back when she halts unexpectedly. McGonagall steps to the side and-
Nearly the entire Weasley family is crammed into the office, Fred and George sit shoulder to shoulder on the two seater couch, Ron sits in an armchair off to the side and appears to be napping. Percy stands stiffly beside Ron, arms crossed. And striding toward Ginny is her Mum, who engulfs her in a hug when she's close enough.
"Ginny." Her mum gasps out, squeezing her tightly. Ginny embraces her back, shy about seeing her family but incredibly grateful to be in her mother's embrace after so long. Unbidden, she can't stop the tears from welling up, and then her brothers are at her side and comforting her. Her father comes up behind her and places a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
"I'm so sorry," Ginny chokes out, "I shouldn't have ever written in that Diary."
Her Mum just squeezes her tighter.
Ginny is bored.
The Burrow is a place that hasn't really changed much throughout her life. There's no sudden additions, no renovations, not many exciting new objects. More so, almost everything has been explored by Ginny.
Before she went to Hogwarts, she had many long summers where it was just her and Ron, and then a summer without Ron, and just with her Mum and Dad. It left her with a lot of downtime, quiet days where her Mum busied herself with housekeeping, and her father went off to work.
In the past, all avenues explored, Ginny would just sit up in her small room and write. She'd write bits of poetry and song, short verses conjured up out of boredom. But now she finds herself unwilling to continue that hobby. Every time she brings her quill towards parchment, she thinks back to writing to Tom, and loses the urge to do much of anything.
She knows it's silly. Tom was gone, everyone told her. She held the Diary in her hands herself and could tell it was simply leather and paper now. But when she tries to bring her quill down on some spare parchment to write and distract herself, she thinks back to ink dripping and being absorbed by the Diary, rearranging themselves into the charismatic words of Tom Riddle. Each time it happens, she always loses the urge to do more than watch as ink slowly drips from her quill and splatters against the crinkled parchment.
More than anything right now, she wants to take up a broom and fly. Not many people knew she enjoyed flying, in fact she actively tries to keep people from finding out. Her Mum held the belief that flying was a dangerous and unladylike activity, and did her best to disallow Ginny from even thinking about brooms.
The broomshed beside The Burrow's improvised Quidditch field remains locked. When Ginny was younger, she would sneak out in the night after a day of her brothers' flying. They'd almost always forget to lock up the broomshed, too tired and lazy after hours of riding their brooms that they wouldn't deign to re-latch the small padlock on the shed's door.
It had been easy for her to sneak down and take the spare broomstick Charlie had left behind when he went to live in Romania. Rickety and pockmarked, bristles fuzzed up and going every which way, it got the job done, but didn't perform the best. But Ginny loved the feeling of being in the air, her legs dangling. Soaring across the dark blue sky, feeling the chilly night air blast into her, cooling down her strained, sweating body.
But that euphoric feeling was not available to her, now. The padlock was thoroughly latched onto the shed door, and sure wasn't coming undone. And neither would her Mum stand to willingly let her into it. So here Ginny was, laying on her small bed under the window, bored and left to brood.
She ghosts around the house for several days. Her Mum doesn't need her help, and she knows from experience that if she tried to help anyways, she'd simply get in the way due to her inexperience. Her Dad quietly tinkers away in his workshop some nights, and she comes down to watch him. But most of what he does goes over her head, and her Dad isn't the best at explaining things in a way that she understands.
It's Tuesday, a full week since she arrived at The Burrow, when she flops down onto her bed after a quiet dinner, defeated. She seems deprived of all of her hobbies, and it's incredibly frustrating. The only thing she can do is obsess and anticipate the arrival of the New Moon in, still a week and a half away.
Her thoughts move in endless circles, thinking over the conversation with Dumbledore in the Hospital Wing again and again, like she can glean a new idea of what may happen simply by analyzing every aspect of what he said. She compulsively fidgets the whole time. Over the past week, her hands have worried a new hole into existence on her threadbare, burgundy comforter. If she continues at this rate, she might just need a new blanket by the end of the break.
Ginny groans, and gets up from her bed. She'll do anything to distract herself right now.
The thing that finally staves off her boredom turns out to be aimless wandering around the fields of Ottery St. Catchpole. She sneaks out one day early in the morning to rejoice in the gentle summer wind that flows through the golden, grassy fields that dominate the surroundings of the village.
Ginny isn't exactly allowed to go off adventuring, but she maneuvers around her Mum, her escapades just barely slipping past her Mum's notice. She isn't excited about the massive row that will no doubt happen when her Mum finds out she's been wandering around Ottery St. Catchpole, but she'll eat any argument as long as she gets to escape her boredom.
The great outdoors aren't necessarily a bastion of interest for her, but she finds a sense of reassuring solidity in simply putting one foot after another, falling into an equal pace. Ginny doesn't really want to think about the events of her first year much, but unbidden, thoughts about the contrast of her freedom arise. Yes, she is still stuck in a sense, lacking the freedom to choose exactly how she wants to live.
But, she tells herself, it's undeniably better than her first year at Hogwarts. Her thoughts jump back to all the times she sank into the ichor-like sea of suggestibility, prostrated under the dominion of Tom. It was a sensation hard to describe, like she ultimately could have resisted him if she had just tried to, but was unwilling to do so, mind clouded with Tom's soothing and encouraging words. Ginny doesn't like thinking about what she did under the Diary, but she remembers it all so clearly, she remembers lurking around the castle, remembers the viscosity of blood as she scrawled thick letters onto the brickwork, the words twisting and blurring together, Tom's voice in her ear, whispering suavely like it was their little secret.
So everyday Ginny sneaks out, she picks a new goalpost far away, and walks to it, and doesn't stop until she's reached it. She does it to prove to herself that she can do stuff without him, and that she's in control of her actions. It's weak reasoning, and she's doubtful that any of it really matters. But it brings her the tiniest bit of comfort. And staves off the boredom.
Things settle into a routine of dodging her Mum, walking for hours in the bright sun, and sneaking back into her room subtly so she can flop down and rest her thin, sore legs. Ginny exists in a weird contradiction of being happy to be away from Hogwarts, and completely loathing how disinteresting everything is without any of her brothers around.
Meal times are somewhat of a tense affair. Ginny sits quietly and shovels down food she can't really taste, as her parents sit quiet. Her Mum doesn't have much to speak about, and her Dad usually ends up awkwardly trailing off when he realizes once more that the table isn't exactly too interested in his Muggle machines and electronics. Ginny always finishes her food first, asking to be excused and retreating to her room.
Ginny doesn't think that her parents are mad at her, and she's still confused by that. Headmaster Dumbledore can preach that it was his fault and not hers, but that doesn't change all the stuff she did. She's surprised she hasn't gotten shouted at by her Mum, firmly reprimanded by her Dad. She isn't even grounded. It doesn't make sense.
Instead, everyone in the house treads quietly around each other, most conversations consisting of small talk. Ginny continues her haphazard schedule of sneaking about, and waits for the other shoe to drop.
Weeks pass, and before she can even realize, it's June 19th, the date she was so heavily anticipating after her conversation with Dumbledore arrives and is just like any other day. Ginny wakes up late in the noon, attends her meals, and retreats back to her room to fidget anxiously.
Her stomach is roiling as she wonders what might happen when the New Moon comes later that night. Dumbledore hasn't exactly listed off any specific possibilities, besides vague ideas of "determining results" from what happened down in The Chamber of Secrets.
She can't help but be confused by the old man. He seemed so willing to share information about such esoteric subjects, to teach her despite the fact that she was just a first year student, in fact even one who remembered even less than other students due to being distracted by Tom and his numbing words.
Perhaps he told her all he knew about what happened to provide her with a sense of comfort. Maybe it was just to make himself feel better, he had so willingly blamed himself for the events of the year, even when they were clearly Ginny's fault.
But in a way, Ginny is flattered that Albus Dumbledore of all people was so willing to let her make her choices. Even if she thinks it's sort of misguided to do so. After all, Dumbledore had left her on her own to speak with her parents about the New Moon and what had happened, seemingly entrusting Ginny's ability to inform them.
Ginny has probably failed him in that regard. It's been eighteen days since she arrived at The Burrow, and she's been entirely tight-lipped about the date. But here she is now, the night time only a couple hours away, the New Moon falling tonight.
She stares at her door and desperately wants to go find her parents and fill them in about tonight, spill out every detail, hear supporting words from them. She reaches out to grasp the door handle. But her hand falls short, hesitant, and she drops it to her side. Her throat is tight and sore, and she releases a shaky breath, settling back onto her bed.
Ginny's orange hair spreads out in a dishevelled halo around her head as she lays down, staring up at the ceiling. Time passes, the early evening light dimming to the dim blue of dusk as she lies still in anxious wait.
She hears The Burrow groan and creak as her Mum climbs the stairs up to bed. The already quiet house seems to quiet further as people turn in for bed. Her room is dark now, no candles lit, the only light coming in through her small window.
She relaxes her breathing, getting a bit drowsy herself. She might just turn in for a nap herself, New Moon be damned. Her eyelids grow heavier, and she turns onto her side, snuggling into her blanket.
Ginny's dreams of a tumultuous and disorienting vortex of fluttering parchment slicing apart her skin. She dreams of an endless lake of dark ink drawing closer and closer until she is submerged, black ichor seeping into her cuts, cold and adhesive. She desperately claws her way to the surface of the ink, lungs protesting as she suffocates.
There is a brief moment where the tug of the ink is winning and pulling her deeper, Ginny not fighting it in her exhaustion. But a hand clasps around her wrist and pulls her up from the sludge roughly,
Tom Riddle is there, standing on the endless horizon of ink, lips quirked in a smirk, his eyes blue and tongue silver. He is ready to charm and speak with politic, robes pressed and tie elegantly tied.
Ginny screams, or at least tries to. Her mouth is below the ink, and it comes rushing into her mouth in a freezing deluge, forcing its way down through her throat and creating a star of bitter cold in her gullet. She claws desperately at Tom's hand, willing him to do anything. Blood, thick and crimson pours down from her scratches on his arm and drips into her eyes, blindingly hot like molten silver. She blinks desperately, willing tears to come and wash them away.
Tom Riddle gives a booming laugh that echoes around the infinite landscape, and releases her aching wrist. She plunges fast into the bottomless ink, swirling and falling. Memories of The Chamber, of petrifying people, of blood and death all swirl around her.
She crashes hard into a massive stone slab. Serpents of snow and ice crawl and slither across her body and bite at her skin. Her finger nails chip off and her nail beds bleed and ache in the cold. She sinks into the stone, twisting and turning, fighting at the dense material, pulling at her reptilian restraints.
She can fight all she wants, but it is fruitless. She sinks entirely into the stone. She cannot breathe or speak or shout, only think about how the powdery solid itches and causes immense pain to her insides, stabbing into fragile flesh, rubbing and tearing into her.
For a long time there is only the cracking and popping of craggily stone, porous rock sings to her as if welcoming, but at the same time horribly hateful and abrasive.
The stone shifts and crumbles until Ginny is falling and falling through open air. Her form makes a massive splash in a knee-deep pool of blood, bones cracking and splintering as she impacts the floor beneath the blood. She lurches up despite everything groaning in protest.
She has come to an abyss of blood, the liquid of life pulsing and flowing, waterfalls crashing down to unseen depths below. Before her is a massive, shining heart, pierced straight through with a wretched fang, beating and lurching and bleeding out blood into the abyss. In front of the heart lies a gilded altar holding a small, leather-bound black book.
Ginny stands up and gleefully runs over to the altar, as if greeting an old friend. She flips the book open and presses her quill to the parchment excitedly. Basilisk venom wells up from the tip of her quill and sizzles, her hands burn through to bone, and the Diary burns up in a billowing mass of embers which spread and make the seas of blood catch fire.
The heart looming above her gives a keening shriek as if in displeasure, and then Basilisk venom is welling up through the arteries, sizzling and popping at the tough heartflesh. The heart engorges, veins turning dark purple and muscle turning sickly brown. The amalgamation of blood and heart, venom and fang beats a staccato beat faster than a horse's hooves at top speed.
It gives one big lurch and then explodes in a gory mass of flames, guts, and blood. Ginny is blinded and disoriented, arms flung out in a last ditch attempt to defend herself. The world is blindingly white for several moments, and sparks of lightning arc up and down her form, shocking and burning her.
Everything darkens. The world is back to being an endless black. Ginny sits on her ankles, Hogwarts robes pressed prim and proper. Held in her hands is a deformed purple heart, beating shallowly and almost nauseating to look at. Ginny instinctively knows that it's hers, that the thing in her hands is a part of her.
She brings it up to her chest and cradles it lovingly like a newborn babe, soothed by its return to her possession. Its arteries pierce her skin and creep into her veins to suck greedily at her blood. It wriggles and then the entire mass is sliding under her skin, shifting aside bones and organs to make its way back to its home.
The grotesque mass gives two solid thuds and then Ginny is screaming in pain and everything is burning burning-
Ginny bolts awake. She's uncomfortably warm, like she's lain close to a fire for the entire time she's slept. It's incredibly disorienting. Her room is dark, pitch black.
She sits up, adrenaline blazing through her drenched body, and is hit by an intense sense of vertigo. Her vision spins and she wavers, rocking back and forward. Her heartbeat pumps a loud cacophony in her ears, like an orchestral drum.
Wait. Her heartbeat?
Ginny nearly crows in joy when she realizes she has a pulse again. She brings her hand up and clasps it tight around her neck, feeling the rushing throb of blood pumping heavily at her pulse points. It's incredibly reassuring to have again, after such a long period of silence.
She simply stills for a moment and sits there, comforted by the feeling. But then she can calm down for a moment, and begin to think. Ginny realizes how warm everything is. Her shirt is soaked through with sweat like she's ran a marathon. She feels around in the dark, realizing her blankets are damp with her sweat. Unable to see in the dark, she brings up a hand and runs it through her hair, fingers coming away clammy.
She really needs to open a window. The heat is suffocating and pervasive with every breath.
She stumbles out of bed, swaying and reaching out a hand to steady herself. Her legs are asleep, pin and needles itching and pinching her muscles uncomfortably. She makes the few steps over to the window, blind in the darkness but familiar enough with her room that she can easily move around any obstacles in it.
Unlatching the window, she pushes it wide open. An incredibly refreshing nighttime breeze blasts into her. Ginny leans into it and breathes deeply, savouring it. It dries her skin and plays with her ginger hair. She's able to truly silence her thoughts for just a moment and smell the nighttime air.
The light of the moon is absent tonight with the New Moon, only the barest luminescence coming from the stars above. The skies are clear and allow an unobstructed view of the mighty nebulae and constellations above. Bugs chirp and rodents slink through the grass around the burrow. Scents of dew and earth creep into her nose. It's a peaceful night, and it soothes her aches and relaxes her tensed muscles.
Suddenly, a new scent assaults Ginny's nose. It's one of the most savoury things she's ever smelt, like walking into the kitchen during Christmas while her Mum prepares a grand feast as the whole family comes to meet and greet. Her nostrils twitch and she inhales deeply, leaning into the scent as if to catch the feast for herself.
That turns out to be the wrong move. Before she even knows what's happening, she's tumbling arse over teakettle out her window, apparently having leaned too far over the sill. Ginny gasps out a choked eep and then she's falling the fifteen feet to the ground beneath her window.
Her small body impacts the damp turf with a great, halting whump. The air is knocked out of her in a great blow, and her face constricts in pain. She pulls in a sore groan of air, her newly regained heart murmuring tightly in displeasure.
That wasn't very impressive. In fact, Ginny would even say it's one of the stupider things she's done in her life. Still, she wiggles her toes and twitches her fingers, lying there in the dirt, and miraculously, nothing seems broken. She continues to lay face-down in the dirt, silently exasperated with herself. Eventually, she gives a great suffering sigh and pushes herself up from the ground.
She turns as if to make her way back up to her bedroom, but halts, straightening up. The pleasant aroma of savoury meat once again tickles at her nose, and Ginny finally realizes just how starving she is. She feels like she hasn't eaten for a week, her stomach suddenly a rumbling chasm of need and desire. She pauses a moment, and then before she can even argue with herself about whether or not to, she's striding unwittingly across the lawn of The Burrow and following the trail of the smell, curious and just famished.
Ginny pads along, feet bare and crushing dried grass beneath every step. Her body swerves and sways along the path as she tracks the delicious scent. Her mind is entirely focused on the pleasure of the smell, she takes deep whiffs of the aroma.
Her pace quickens, her want and hunger only grows with each step. Her single-minded determination to find the source of the smell eventually makes her drop into a run.
The light air paws at her form, her hair bounces and gets caught in the wind as she sprints along the path. She's found her way into one of the few forests found near Ottery St. Catchpole. The ground is rough and uncertain, but Ginny does not stumble, even in the pitch darkness of the deep night. She weaves through the trees as if her path is predetermined. The coarse dirt scratches at her bare feet, but she pays it no heed.
She's struck by how alive she feels, speeding through the shrubbery in the moonless night. She can't help but release a whooping laugh of joy as she pads along. Her lips form a bare grin and the cold night air surges past her clenched teeth and gets swallowed in her exhilarated inhalations.
It seems as if the scent is all around her now. Ginny slows, glancing about confusedly. She comes to a clearing in the forest, the stars shining down and winking at her as if conferring answers.
A light pattering reaches her ears, and Ginny moves back and to the side, hiding behind an oak tree and wary of discovery. She pokes her head out just enough to look at the clearing, her small hands grasped around the thick and gnarled bark of the tree.
Two Red deers, a hind and a fawn, have found their way into the clearing and have begun to graze. Ginny watches quietly, and it's almost like she can see the scent hover in the dim nighttime air. She moves forward, as if to approach the animals.
Her foot lands right on a twig and snaps it, the sound audible in the calm night. The hind's head darts up, but Ginny is already out of sight, hiding behind the tree again. She arrests her breathing, keeping quiet, the only noise in her ears is her heartbeat and the ruffling of the trees and the wind tickles them. Ginny waits for several moments.
She's just about to step out again when she hears the soft pitter-patter of steps again. It draws closer to the tree Ginny is hiding behind, and she waits with bated breath. She can hear the steps come within eight feet of her hiding spot and halt. Ginny tenses.
In a flurry of motion, she launches herself from her hiding spot and towards the clearing. She gets a glimpse of the fawn, head tilted in innocent curiosity, before she's upon it and her hands grasp savagely at its neck. The hind darts off, spooked, but Ginny doesn't pay it any mind. The source of the savoury scent is right in front of her, like Christmas dinner piled onto the long wooden table at The Burrow. Her stomach grumbles and complains.
Ginny barely thinks twice before she digs in. Her hands grasp and pull savagely at the neck of the fawn, and it keens in protest. She bares her mouth in a snarl of hunger and bites viciously into the jugular of the fawn, like a snake striking its prey. Hot blood bursts against her face and gushes into her mouth, tasting like bitter nectar, imbued with copper umami.
Ginny chews deeper into the neck, hands tearing the skin roughly. In a savage display of strength, her arms tighten and tear the head of the deer from its body, blood spurting across the clearing. In another state of mind, perhaps she would be mortified at her carnage. Instead, all she knows is that the pit in her stomach needs filling and that it all tastes so good.
The fawn is long-since dead, and she discards the head off to the side, ruthless in pursuit of her hunger. She starts on the body next, gnawing and biting around bones and cartilage. She roughly grabs at the ribcage and tears it apart, discarding the cracked bones off to the side.
Eventually, she comes to the heart of the fawn. Her brain seems to zero in on it, the small dark mass of muscle. She dig it out and lifts it up above the carcass, as if beholding a beautiful jewel in the starlight, before bringing it down to her mouth and munching on the tough but juicy organ. Deer blood flows down her front in rivulets, staining her already bloodied night shirt. Her arms are bloodied to the elbows, and gore accumulates underneath her fingernails.
Ginny finishes her meal and settles back, satisfied. She sits and simply breathes in the clearing for a few moments, the scent of spilled blood pungent in the summer night. She's finally sated, and exhaustion clouds her mind, like she's just finished the Welcoming Feast at Hogwarts and is now off to bed in the dormitories. She slinks away from the clearing, single-minded and uncaring.
The walk back home blurs together in her exhausted state. She has the barest presence of mind to stop by the stream close to The Burrow, and wash away the itchy and drying gore from her arms and front.
She eventually falls into her bed, damp and exhausted, night clothes torn and muddied. The barest hint of orange peeks over the horizon, and she turns away from her window and the light, snuggling deeply into her comforter.
The midday sun filters through her open window and bounces around her room. Ginny blearily cracks an eye open, drowsy and bothered by the bright light. Birds outside trill and sing, the sound echoing through her opened window. Her curtains flap in the breeze. She dimly hears the sound of her mother bustling about. It is June 20th, the day the her brothers will come home from Hogwarts.
Ginny throws her blanket aside, and stands up to get ready for the day. She freezes in the middle of getting up. Her night clothes are torn up and horribly stained with blood red and muddy brown.
She quickly sits back down as all of the events of the prior night come rushing back to her. The dream, her heart back with her. The aroma and the clearing. She remembers how she rejoiced in the sweet taste of the fawn and feasted on it.
Recalling it all stirs a feeling of sickness, dread, and guilt in her stomach. She pulls her legs up onto the bed and hugs them to her chest. Her bloodstained shirt is an eerie and vivid reminder of what she had done.
Ginny just can't understand why she doesn't get in trouble. First the events of her first year, now this. Feelings of guilt and shame rise up in her and she suppresses tears. She'd killed and eaten an innocent animal in a fog of hunger, seized a fawn right before the eyes of what must've been its mother. It makes her sick to her stomach, remembering the way she tore into the animal, tore its head right off.
She desperately wants to get away from it all. Her hands grab at the torn fabric of her shirt and make surprisingly quick work of it, the sticky fabric tearing away as easily as napkins. She divest herself of the ruined clothes, tucking them under her mattress to be dealt with. She grabs for her worn bathrobe, and once she makes sure all of the tattered clothes are adequately hidden, she turns to make her way out into the hallway.
That's when she gets her second unpleasant surprise for the day. Her hand clasps tightly around the door handle, and she goes to turn it. However, the handle does not turn. Instead, it pops clean off with a small dink, and the metal warps under her tight grasp.
Ginny stares bewilderedly at the handle held in her grasp. She brings up her other hand to the piece of metal, and grasping it, bends the thick metal like a thin spoon. She's left staring confused at a very wonky and warped piece of scrap in her hands.
If Fred and George had been back already, she would've blamed it as being due to one of their pranks. But her brothers aren't back from Hogwarts yet, they'd only be here in time for dinner.
Unbidden, her mind flashes back to last night. The way she so easily tore off the head of the fawn, with barely a flex of her arms. Ginny grimaces. Was this another effect of the botched ritual, revealed by the New Moon and making her life ever more complicated?
She gives another long suffering sigh, which seems to be her go to reaction as of late, and resolves to use a very light touch until she finds out more.
She sets aside the warped piece of metal, and finangles her handle-less door open with a bit of difficulty, being careful to use a feather touch. Then she's out in the hallway. She quickly runs down The Burrow's rickety staircase, before opening the bathroom door, this time luckily without causing any damage.
Sequestered in the bathroom, she takes a moment to breathe, trying to tackle her emotions and keep herself calm. She walks over and turns on the shower. Impatiently, she climbs into the shower even though it hasn't had time to warm up, and is welcomed with a coldish spray.
She doesn't mind it, though. She needs coolness and clarity right now. She sits down, allowing the cold shower to run all over her form and wash away the muck, sweat, and few remnants of gore.
Ginny places her head in her arms and finally lets the tears flow free.
Ginny drudges along one of the many roads in Ottery St. Catchpole. In her hands she holds a shovel, its wood handle rough and metal head rusted. The afternoon sun beams down on her, bright and glaring. It's a deceptively beautiful day for what Ginny is planning to do.
She had actually asked permission to leave the house for once. Her Mum had surprisingly allowed it, perhaps believing that she wanted a moment of quiet before her brothers came back and caused chaos. It's ironic, because for the first time this summer, Ginny doesn't really want to be outside. She'd much rather be up and moping in her room, but she feels she has a job to do.
She'd stopped by the gardening bin where her mother kept all the relevant tools for when she put them to chores involving no magic, grabbed one of the old shovels, and set off on her way.
Now she walks, scanning the surroundings and consulting her vague and rushed memories of the night before, retracing her steps and recalling landmarks. Daytime completely changes how the wilderness around Ottery St. Catchpole looks, and she struggles and dithers over which way to go many times.
Eventually, she comes upon the same woods she knows she ran into last night, and enters them. The sky above disappears as the canopy of trees obscures it. The Forest in daytime is awash with the buzz of insects, the trills of birds, and the light scuffling of small animals which creep under the brush, contrasting with its prior nocturnal state.
Ginny continues into the forest, surroundings darkening as the shrubbery grows thickers. She retraces her steps, occasionally seeing broken trees or distinct plants that point her in the right direction. The handle of the shovel is rough in her hands, but she keeps it close in reassurance.
Her pace slows. She's nearly upon the clearing now. Guilt wells up, but Ginny squashes it and recites to herself the reason for being here. She wants to bury the fawn's body, as if in apology for what she did. She steels her nerves, biting at her lip, before taking the remaining halting and hesitant steps towards the clearing.
The scene that greets her eyes as she comes around the bend to the clearing is balking. Not only because of the stark presence of remnant gore, bones strewn about, blood soaked soil pungent and coppery, but also because there is a young girl of Ginny's own age squatting above and silently inspecting the torn-off head of the fawn, uncaring of the gore and swarming flies.
The girl, hair dirty blonde and reaching to her shoulders, is clad in a light blue sundress, which Ginny notices has accumulated a couple red spots of its own, no doubt due to coming into contact with the drenched soil of the clearing. She's quiet, seemingly staring down pensively at the strewn about carcass.
Ginny is so stupefied and shocked at the girl's presence there that before she even realizes it, the shovel is slipping from her suddenly clammy hands. She makes an awkward lunge for the handle, but it's falling too fast. The head of the shovel makes contact with the turf, clanging against a small rock beneath it, ringing out into the clearing with a loud ting. The girl glances up, startled and locking onto Ginny instantly.
She has prominent cobalt blue eyes that give her somewhat of a permanently surprised look, and her pale eyebrows, high and thin, don't seem to work against that impression. Her eyes are locked on to Ginny, and disturbingly unblinking. Ginny shifts out of her unbalanced position, deciding not to pick up the shovel. The stare at each other, the girl's expression somewhat unreadable and Ginny keeping quiet in wait of accusation.
"Hello." the girl finally speaks, voice airy and ethereal regardless of the viscera spread out around here. She seems to hesitate, before continuing on with speaking.
"Are you going to eat me?" she asks, brows quirked like it's an interesting matter of academic study.
"...No?" Ginny responds, thrown for a loop and thoroughly confused. What kind of person just asks stuff like that? Then again, she can certainly say it's the strangest set of circumstances she's ever met a person under, so perhaps it's justified.
The girl appears content with Ginny's answer, and lowers her gaze to the shovel dropped on the ground. Ginny shuffles awkwardly, not knowing what to say or do. The breeze picks up and drifts through the trees. The girl's flowy sundress lifts slightly from the gust, and part of it settles in a nearby pool of blood. Clouds roil in overhead, the warm afternoon having passed and a colder early evening starting to sweep in. Ginny needs to get started if she wants to be back at home in time for supper. She glances around awkwardly. The girl sits quietly, seemingly content to zone out.
Ginny, wary of the girl but still having a mission, bends down to pick up the shovel. She walks several paces away from the display of violence, and stabs the shovel into the soft forest dirt. She levers the shovel, bringing up dirt and exposing thin buried roots. Ginny is momentarily surprised at how easy it is to dig in to, and recalls how easily she bent the handle earlier that day. The New Moon had revealed to her an unbridled strength. She just wishes she was using it for something else than burying innocent creatures caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
For a long while, the clearing is home to only the sounds of the shovel piercing earth. Ginny looks over to the girl every now and then, but she just seems to content herself with sitting silently and gazing around, sometimes at Ginny, sometimes just staring off into the distance, gaze wandering as if seeing something unseen.
Ginny busies herself, and digs a progressively larger hole. Her breathing is heavy, but her arms do not ache like they should. Her heart beats a steady and well-timed pace in her ears, and she focuses on the simple task of dig, move, toss.
"Did he taste any good?" the girl suddenly pipes up. Ginny swings her gaze back to the girl, almost having forgotten her presence. She's come to stand closer to Ginny's hole, dirty blonde hair flapping in the breeze and standing out in the darkening light of early evening. In her hands she lovingly cradles the small, severed head of the fawn, its open eyes like glass, and its face tensed in rigor mortis.
Ginny balks at the question, guilt and shame rising up within her and tearing at her throat. The question stabs her in the core, not only due to her shame, but also due to the thoughts well up in response. Her mind flashes to blood like sweet honey, the way it pulsed and filled her mouth with savory warmth. The delicate raw meat, the delightful tough and juicy muscle of the heart. It had culminated in a way to be one of the most satisfying meals she'd ever had in her life, and that makes her hate herself.
She wants to yell at the girl for asking such a terrible question, but the calm gaze in her blue eyes gives her pause, and Ginny sorely swallows her displeasure. She lowers her head, shameful, but feeling that the girl deserves a response. She jerks a small nod, eyes scrunched up and not looking at the girl, vision turning watery with tears she doesn't allow to fall.
Ginny turns away, and resumes her digging. The hole is nearly deep enough now. The girl, judging from the sounds Ginny hears, sits down near the hole, seemingly just watching Ginny dig deeper and deeper. Ginny's mind flashes back to the Chamber, her heart buried beneath the limestone. Her heart grasps at her side, feeling the organ pulse and lurch in her chest once more, knowing intuitively that it has changed, that her heart did not come up from the depths unscarred.
She steps away from the hole, satisfied with its depth. The girl just watches her appraise it, remaining seated on the ground with her legs crossed. Ginny walks over to the other side of the clearing, and leans down to appraise the decapitated body. Flies buzz and hover above it, and she swats a hand in annoyance.
The body is missing a great amount of flesh in several places. Teeth marks are discernable on pale, ivory white bone. One of the back legs has been savagely twisted, the bone warped and broken. She grimaces, and picks up the carcass. It's deceptively heavy, but Ginny does not struggle with it in her newfound strength.
She holds it against her chest, and walks back over to the hole. The girl regards her with placidity, her hands busying themselves by tearing up some of the thin grass found on the clearing's floor. Ginny drops to her knees heavily, and bends over, releasing the carcass to the bottom of the hole.
She goes back and forth several times, scavenging for signs of the violence. She brings back discarded bones, she picks up thrown-about tufts of fur, she shovels bloodstained dirt into the hole, until all that's left where it happened is a bare patch of dirt. She walks back over to the hole, and grabs hold of the shovel.
Before she starts to drop dirt on the carcass, the girl leans forward. Her hands cradle the head of the fawn, fingers tight. A discernible expression of sadness blooms on the face of the girl, and it pulls on Ginny's heartstrings.
The girl finally seems to shake herself, and bending down into the hole, lightly places the severed head of the fawn beside the stumped neck of the body. She hovers for a moment, hands gripping the edge of the hole, before she pulls back and sits on her ankles, looking up at Ginny. Ginny's lip trembles, but she steels herself, and starts shoveling the pile of dirt into the grave.
Eventually, the hole is filled. Ginny lightly tosses the shovel aside, and drops into a slouched seat, bringomg her hands up to her chin and staring broodily at the mound of bare dirt. The sky still darkens, enough that Ginny knows that she needs to be back in an hour if she doesn't want to be missed. But she simply sits quietly and waits, wondering if the other girl will say anything.
"Do you…" the girl trails off, uncertainty and hesitancy present in her voice. Ginny turns her head away from the grave, and her eyes seek out the girl. Her head is tilted down, dirty blonde hair falling in front of her and obscuring her face. Ginny waits for her to continue her question.
"Will you be my friend?" the girl mumbled in a rush. Ginny's given pause, having expected a different question, perhaps one about why she did it, or some other morbid curiosity. Instead, the girl holds her hand out, as if beckoning to Ginny with her request.
Ginny almost wants to laugh in incredulity at the unexpected request. But she stops herself from doing so, and chooses to regard the girl more closely, The way her fingers are splayed wide toward Ginny, the small movement of muscle in her face as she worries at her lip. Ginny takes a moment to sit back and think.
She remembers the way the girl asked such a morbid question about whether or not the animal tasted good to Ginny. She recalls how hesitant the girl was to let go of the fawn's head, stroking it and cradling it lovingly.
She averts her eyes slightly, and hesitantly clasps her hand lightly with the girl's. She feels like she owes this girl friendship.
The girls palms are clammy in the coldening weather. Ginny makes sure to clasp the hand extra lightly, not wanting to hurt the girl with the strength she hasn't yet got a handle on. The girl smiles sadly at her, pink lips curving up slightly as her eyes glisten.
"I'm Luna. Luna Lovegood." the girl offers.
"Ginny Weasley." Ginny mumbles in response.
They release each others hands, and stand somewhat awkwardly. Ginny's gaze travels up towards the sky, noticing the clouds roiling. She thinks it'll rain tonight.
"I have to get home now, sorry." Ginny utters, tongue thick in her mouth.
"Me too." Luna answers, appearing reticent.
They turn, both regarding the grave, and then nod goodbye at each other shallowly. Ginny begins to walk back to The Burrow, and Luna begins to walk the opposite way. They share a last final glance, and then Ginny disappears into the thick shrubbery of the forest.